SIM·N
by Spring-Heel-Jacq
Summary: Telling of WALL·E but with anthropomorphic animals replacing robots.
1. Introduction

Here is the first chapter of the reloaded story that got deleted. For those who are confused, go see my notes under _"_SUMMER IN IRELAND:10TH Anniversary revived!" and you'll see what I mean.

Anyways, I got the idea from another author who gave me his consent of doing a version of my own after I chose to edit his story a while back.

Oh! I wish to thank **Rosa Laevigata **for suggesting the title!

**DISCLAIMER**

_The Chipmunks _are an American music group of singing anthropomorphic chipmunks created in 1958 by by **_Ross Bagdasarian Sr. _**which he owned under the formerly called **_Bagdasarian Film Corporations_** now called **_Bagdasarian __Productions_** owned and operated by **_Ross Bagdasarian Jr._** and **_Janice Karman_**.

The character _Pooka_ is a fictional dog in the 1997 American animated film Anastasia, produced and directed by _**Don Bluth **_and _**Gary Goldman **_at**_ Fox Animation Studios_**.

* * *

Earth, a world long forgotten, a once terrestrial beacon of life now scarred by its former inhabitants and their artificial leavings, now an impurity floating around in space, a ball of garbage so to speak. Such an ironically laughable thought that it's the only known habitable planet in the known universe, if anyone could've seen it now….

However, no one can or ever will again, now that it is by definition: devoid of life. An entire planet with absolute zero population, the former twelve billion inhabitants left their mark, or marks seen from space by new landscapes made entirely of garbage, if the atmosphere had any visibility that is. Even the air is subsequently thick from pollution and the landmasses are almost unrecognizable. Entire continents covered, reshaped, and transformed into a combination of tundra and desert like wastelands solely by plastic, paper, and metal waste, every city now giant junkyards buried by mountains or towers of trash if seen from afar.

Here, in the Buy N' Large Cleanup Sector NA-001, formerly known as New York City, it is barely what it used to be like by the people who lived here. The once mighty iconic buildings of downtown Manhattan now dwarfed or were buried by the even taller copious numbers of towers made entirely of trash cubes, thousands of feet high and stretching on for miles in all directions. The once water filled bays of the Hudson now dried up polluted valleys by the receded Atlantic. Old buildings and bridges mostly rusted and eroded away by the etchings of time, nature, and man's impact. Garbage and the howling volatile winds the only predominant feature present in the once recognizable metropolis but it's not the only thing in this hellhole.

A faint but clear chirping of music sounded, like a whisper in the winds of the dead city. In the distance, something moves amongst the heaps of trash, traversing the streets, a single living being.

Maybe it isn't so devoid of life...

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

A lone anthropomorphic male chipmunk walked around the avenues of trash towers, strolling across the desolate littered streets carrying out his job, known as "directive." The sound of music emitted from the chipmunk's playable yet eroded and abused with slight static ancient cassette player gave the only sign of life in this place.

He stops near a small, ancient mobile compactor nearby, one of many around the sector, wielding a shovel in his heavy-duty gloved hands, begins scooping a pile after pile of the land's indefinite filth into the device, and activated it. The sound of its obsolete and worn hydraulics grinding as it compresses the garbage into a cube echoing through the streets, not silencing the sound of upbeat happy music. The compactor opens and spits out a one by one meter cube of junk, weighing roughly fifty kilos. The chipmunk then picks it up with practiced ease and carries it behind his back. Another life form, a small flaccid eared, fuzzy grayish-brown canine mutt follows right behind him. After some considerable climbing and carrying up a height of trash, the chipmunk finally stacks the cube along with others on the top of the trash tower.

The chipmunk pauses for a moment, leaning against the cubes trying to catch his breath from such labor. He wore a very old, ratty, and dirty coverall jumpsuit, its jean texture cloth coated with stains of dirt, dust, grime, sweat, oil, grease, and god-knew-what other impurities covered him and a Bleu de France blue turtleneck sweater with its sleeves rolled up under his overalls. His name, Simon, barely readable on the similarly worn red patch explicitly roughly stitched on his left breast side, its letters "BNL" all but faded. He stood four feet nine and looked in his late teens. His exposed areas of fur had a sun-bleached shade of light brown from the dust and unforgiving sun, his unruly messy tan tuft of hair stuck out in different directions.

He looks back up to the cubes in front of him.

"Huh?" Something caught his attention, a shimmering object from one of the cubes. He grabs it, it doesn't budge, and he tries harder, grunting for more strength, still nothing. Yanking it with his feet on the cubes, pulling with all his might, the iridescent object finally breaks free with a sudden force that Simon falls flat on his back. He sits himself up and simply stared at the object he pried free, just a circular aluminum trash lid.

_Malleable Metal? Lustrous gray? _The chipmunk tosses the lid twice in the air and catches it in his hands.

_Lightweight? Hmm . . . If I remember correctly from my lessons, this is part of the boron group of chemical elements known as aluminum. But . . . what exactly is this?_ he wondered how something so simple would make him work himself to just know what it was, such curiosity he had.

"Pooka!" He whistles for his mutt companion to come with him, back down the one thousand meter or one three hundred, nine thousand feet of trash tower in a spiraling makeshift ramp, slowly making his way smoothly but at unease at the sight of a long way down to the streets below.


	2. Home on the Range

Sorry for the long wait. Than again I really don't care too much about this considering it got deleted, thus deleting _all _of the comments . . . there were a few that I really liked *sniff* meh, who am I kidding? Enjoy the chapter.

I hope I got the characteristics right for the three black and white trio . . . came across them when the quote "HEEEEELLLLLLLLOOOOOOOO NURSE!" stuck in my head one day a while back. When somebody told me the origin of the quote, I looked up Animaniacs and saw the picture with three Anthropomorphic characters. To me, by the looks of the one in the red hat's loopsided eyes, tongue sticking out and looking like a homicidal maniac, he's completely insane which is why I portrayed him as suicidal and why he was in a straitjacket. The shirtless one in khaki pants looked older and mature than the other two and because the other two look childish. As for the last one, a single female, she seems to be a girly girl with the flower in her "hair" and the pink skirt. Now all of this is based on a hunch . . . Please correct me if I'm wrong . . .

READ AND REVIEW!

**trex841:** Thanks for commenting!

**mpkio2: **MPEEEEEEEEEEE! I'm so happy you commented!

**DISCLAIMER**

_The Chipmunks _rightfully belongs to both _**Ross Bagdasarian Sr.**_ and _**Ross Bagdasarian Jr.**_ as well as _**Janice Karman**_.

Collaborated by _**Steven Spielberg**_, Animaniacs is an American animated series distributed by _**Warner Bros. **_and produced by _**Television**__ Amblin Entertainment _and _****__Warner Bros. Animation_.

The character _Pooka_ is a fictional dog in the 1997 American animated film Anastasia, produced and directed by _**Don Bluth **_and _**Gary Goldman **_at**_ Fox Animation Studios_**.

* * *

It's a far enough distance to traverse through the toxic city, as Simon travels alone on foot down the streets from the mountains of trash of former Central Park. Old buildings crumbled and towers of garbage cubes proudly stood as far as the eye could see but he remained unfazed, remaining oblivious to Buy N' Large mega corporation logos, similar to the one on his uniform. Holographic screens materialize from literally everywhere. Buy N' Large shopping, Buy N' Large bank, Buy N' Large restaurants, stores, skyscrapers, Buy N' Large everywhere!

He passes Wall Street, old newspapers scattered everywhere, barely legible from the dirt, read: "TOO MUCH TRASH! EARTH COVERED! BUY N' LARGE CEO DECLARES GLOBAL EMERGENCY!"

Simon reaches an elevated maglev train station, the train itself derailed and eroded on the abandoned spot so long ago. Simon notions for Pooka to follow, as he hops down on the tracks and continues walking, a short cut home, but not a pleasant one.

He keeps looking ahead, for all around him there are dead anthropomorphic beings. Skeletal remains all wearing similar nametags as Simon, their bodies scattered and forgotten like the garbage city they were cleaning, and all but decomposed by nature and time. He remembers this place, being born and raise here. He couldn't escape it nor change it for it was all his life and job as well as for his fellow cleanup workers, participating since early childhood in excavating the dystopian city, no matter what. It was all part of a global effort that started a very long time ago, by what was left of the governing Buy N' Large to clean the planet for people who left on ships that had set sail for the infinite vacuum of space. They left a certain few millions of selected laborers, including Simon's ancestors, to do the work of the societies that left them behind while on a cruise in the heavens. For reasons he doesn't know, never returned, he forgotten how long it's been since they left in the year 2105, decades, maybe centuries passed.

The job itself deadly for constant fatal accidents from falling off the trash towers to premature burial from collapsing tower landslides. Extremely powerful sandstorms wrecked the most havoc in any area of the sector along with the cause of destroying untold years worth of labor. Disease a commonplace as products of harmful pollution and mass starvation, medicine became scarce to crude improvising to eventually nonexistent, allowing pandemic to spread, people dying off by the hundreds every day. All these natural forces lead to violent civil unrest from the workers turning on each other, fighting for survival. Over time, the workers died off by the thousands to the millions, and when Simon was able to use a shovel for the first time, there were very few left, less than a thousand in the sector of the dwindling tens of thousands globally. Every year, they succumbed to the uninhabitable environment or killed each other off one by one. Only Simon himself barely survived and he was just a child. There were probably a few more like him scattered across the globe. Like Sector _NA-001_, they were all dead and forgotten, virtually at the edge of extinction.

There is uneasiness in him as he kept walking, avoiding looking at his fallen workers but snaps back into reality by a sharp pain.

"Aah!" he shouts and holds his bleeding foot in reflex. Collecting himself, Simon glimpses under his heavy-duty work boots, they're completely worn to his feet! He realizes as he looked at the piece of metal shards along the corroded tracks he stepped on and pierced his foot, and appears to be more along the way. Wanting to get home in time, he had to find replacements or be lost in this city at night in the toxic air.

He makes his way carefully around the mass grave of his fellow workers. There must be a hundred bodies unmoved from the spot they dropped dead, some completely buried in trash and sand, and few with wearable clothes, let alone boots. Finally, he spots a usable pair, still fit to the skeleton of its deceased owner. The cadaver wore tattered beige khaki pants, the large golden buckle luminous rusted away. Simon instantly recognized the carcass as the oldest of the three-orphaned siblings. The ambiguous creature dropped dead from heatstroke, a cube still clung in his arms, carrying out his directive until death took him over not too long ago, reuniting with his siblings, possibly his parents, in the great beyond. His brother the first to go when . Overtime, insanity claimed the eleven-year-old overtime. Restrained in a straitjacket when he started physically harming himself as well as those around him, the preteen eventually, the preteen got free and supposedly committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. The only thing found to give such assumption was his red baseball cap nearby. The youngest, a seven year old girl, went into deep depression and starved herself to death. After the loss of both siblings, the bereavement eldest estranged himself from fellow workers and literally worked himself to death.

Simon's memories filled him with sadness for his fallen comrades, knowing almost every single one of their faces and voices. He knew them since his first memories as a helpless worker, remembering them alive as if it were yesterday, considering them his "siblings," the closest thing to family he ever had because they were all he knew. Sure, they turned on each other and him when there was no food left to survive, resorting to looting, murder, even cannibalism. He still considered them the only family he had, unable to bring himself to kill them in defense, running away, cowardly hiding and waited until the mass killing ended. Now, seeing all those he knew dead and rotting everywhere… Since then he never tried to look back at them again, only at a time of absolute need, and that need was now.

Simon looks over the bodies scattered about, they were still wondering the streets of an uninhabitable wasteland and cleaning a long hopeless cause until they gave their last breath for it yet they didn't. Deep down, he felt like a grave robber. Worse, Simon felt guilty for them to die and not him.

_They don't need to worry about their troubles anymore. Another man's death is another man's survival, _Simon shook the thought from his mind. Showing respect for the decomposing Warner, Simon carefully exchanges his boots, trying hard not to think about the feelings he felt when they died.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Walking along the eroded train tracks, sporting new boots, Simon chirps triumphantly as he and Pooka made their way down the tracks to lower Manhattan. The chipmunk climbs off the tracks as he reaches his exit station, Pooka following closely behind him.

He passes a series of check stands for the train station. Suddenly a high-tech holographic-ad appears on the walls, displaying static images of luxurious Buy N' Large spaceships leaving Earth.

A voice comes on over the advertisement.

_"TOO MUCH GARBAGE IN YOUR FACE? THERE'S PLENTY OF SPACE OUT IN SPACE!"_ Images with workers like him still on the surface, all with content of cleaning, like a janitorial advertisement.

At last, he reaches the last road leading to his destination. As he stepped off the ramp, a huge holographic-ad appears overhead. The same announcement voice returns.

"_SPEND YOUR FIVE YEAR CRUISE IN STYLE! WAITED UPON TWENTY FOUR HOURS A DAY BY OUR FULLY AUTOMATED CREW, WHILE YOUR CAPTAIN CHARTS A COURSE FOR NONSTOP ENTERTAINMENT, FINE DINING, AND WITH OUR ALL ACCESS HOVER CHAIRS, EVEN GRANDMA CAN JOIN THE FUN, THERE'S NO NEED TO WALK!_" He has seen these ads before, but he despised them for showing things other humans enjoyed while he is here on this planet. Not to mention his other companions' dead and rotting away without a care from anyone on these moving representative pictures of the society they were serving. Those humans and other anthropomorphic animals will never know who they were or what happened on this world. Simon continues on his walk home as the ad goes on...

"_THE AXIOM_,_ PUTTING THE STAR IN EXECUTIVE STARLINER!_" Then another image appears, showing the annoying overly optimistic Buy N' Large chief executive officer Shelby Forthright in a fine suit, an executive Buy N' Large pin on his lapel. Short gray spotted hair parted to the right sat on the square faced, clean shaved middle-aged man.

"Because at Buy N' Large, space is the final fun-tier!" The great ship's engines thunderously lifts off as the holographic-screen fades away, overlooking an enormous manufactured concave, miles wide and thousands of feet deep in the dried up Hudson Bay not empty like the Grand Canyon. It was the launch pad for the _Axiom _as seen in the communiqué.

He walks on what's left of the Brooklyn Bridge it that hasn't collapsed, its main support towers still standing, sections of the bridge still attached. Simon spots a mammoth vehicle near the broken edge of the crossing.

_Finally,_ Simon thought as he walked up to the large truck, a Tonka-like transport with treads, broken down on the bridge, with other smaller vehicles scattered about. He pulls a lever on the side of the back, the sound of loud and obsolete hydraulic actuators activating, lowering a ramp. Simon is home from another day of hard labor.


	3. Home Sweet Truck

**trex841** = Thanks for the help! I really appreciated it!

**rfollman**= Thanks

**EmmetEarwax**= Just enjoy the story

**Continuum Regained**= Thanks!

**DISCLAIMER**

_The Chipmunks _rightfully belongs to both _**Ross Bagdasarian Sr.**_ and _**Ross Bagdasarian Jr.**_ as well as _**Janice Karman**_.

The character _Pooka_ is a fictional dog in the 1997 American animated film Anastasia, produced and directed by _**Don Bluth **_and _**Gary Goldman **_at**_ Fox Animation Studios_**.

* * *

This truck is in essence, his house. Inside, rows upon rows of rotating shelves filled with salvaged trash, or to him: treasures. Interesting items he found and collected from the trash compacting over the years, probably since he first picked up a shovel. Since then he has retrieved and compiled seemingly everything random he could find: old broken children's toys, parking cones, pony ride stands, hand tools, antique clocks, old books, Christmas lights, utility-home appliances, hardware, cloths, a drum, signs, anything.

Simon takes off his new boots and gloves, humming cheerfully to the tunes of the music from earlier as he finally settles down for the day. He removes his goggles, exposing his spectacled grayish blue eyes adjusting to the harsh light flooding inside the truck. He hangs his boots, gloves, and goggles near the entrance as he walks down the center aisle to the other end of the truck, dusting off and unzipping his filthy overall jump suit and takes off his Bleu de France blue long sleeve sweatshirt, along with a ratty pair of gray workpants underneath. He drags his feet to his humble section-of-the-truck of a home, a fabric sheet with its ends tied to metal rods on opposite sides with another sheet draped over it with a tattered pillow on one end, resembling a hammock, his bed. A stack of car batteries lay next to where he sleeps, wired to a switch to all the hanging Christmas lights in the truck, serving as the only light source.

Simon sets down his bag and suit, collapsing on his hammock, Pooka lies on the floor exhausted from the walk as much as Simon was. His whole body aching, but doesn't mind though, for he has grown use to the stresses and pain of heavy-lifting physical labor, and his body showed it.

Despite his thin frame, Simon is physically fit having barely survived starvation on canned food and collected ground/rainwater, sanitary or not. His fur fifthly from almost a lifetime worth of stoop labor in the dirt, and not being bathed in a very, _very_ long time. He felt somewhat uncomfortable that his unclean fur coated with a thin layer of sweat from the scorching 40˚+ Celsius heat. His body pale from wearing the work suit protecting him from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, the areas of fur exposed to the sun had extreme tans, mostly on his forearms and face except where the goggles shielded his eyes.

Of all the things making his body look eroded and revolting were the numerous, almost unaccountable marks of past injuries covering him from head to toe. All the scars were the marks left by the dangerous, often unforgiving work and environment. There were scars after scars of healed or partially healed scrapes. Blisters, cuts, calluses, burns, and gashes spread all over his arms, legs, torso, and some on his face, most of them old and some recent, and more to add to his already grizzled body every new day of working, every inch of him weather-beaten, making his skin coarse as fine sandpaper in most places. With no proper medical supplies that he did not possess, Simon could only live with the almost endless pain of new wounds and reopened, infected ones on a daily basis.

The most striking features of him were in his torso and his right arm. A small, crude looking device, imbedded inside the front his chest, the shape and size of an ancient cell phone with scar tissue surrounding it. It had a glowing yellow energy meter with an electrical socket built into it. It's an externally charged artificial pacemaker.

The second feature was his mechanical prosthetic composed of his right forearm, microprocessors capable of controlling the movements of the limb is attached to the severed nerve ending at his elbow. The lightweight prosthetic looked crude with different pieces of metallic casing bolted or welded together, if broken down and rebuilt several times by one hand. Its internal workings encaged on one side, exposing wires and servos. The sturdy titanium fingers and joints worn rough with scratches and nicks from all the work he does. A long scar ran from where his mechanical arm meets flesh at the elbow, up the back of his arm where it splits into two different long scars. One scar travelled over his chest to his pacemaker, containing the biodegradable line supplying power to the arm. The other scar ran up his neck and into the back of his head into his cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls motor functions. This scar contains the nano-fiber wiring that processes bioelectric signals in his brain, allowing him to control his arm through a neural link at the speed of his thoughts. The arm lets him to lift considerable heavy objects like trash cubes and has no sense of touch in that arm so he can't feel pain. At the cost of drawing small amounts of power from his pacemaker and it constantly itched at the wiring scar where it connected to him.

He looks exhausted from taking a look at himself, the years of endless labor on him drained his strength, but he was just glad that he makes it through the day and still in one piece, mostly. Simon acquired the majority of his larger scars, especially his prosthetic arm, from accidents when he was doing his directive since he was just a child. He was very clumsy at the time and still is. Though for him, the memories of those times as a child-worker are too painful to remember, there was lots of pain inflicted on his body from his contraption of an arm, and there even were no anesthetics or painkillers available back then. The consequences on him and his brethrens were worse, trying to get used to his replacement arm and unintentionally harming others and himself. Though he was now used to them to the point they were finally part of him, that what really mattered.

After a few minutes of laying down resting, Simon gets up and decides to find his form of relaxation in this hellhole. He removes what appears to be a video cassette from a toaster, its title still readable on the old tape: Hello Dolly.

Placing it in an old VCR, he turns it on, and an ancient TV screen flickers to life as the cheerful tune of actors dance and sing '_Put On Your Sunday Clothes_.' The image and sound quality is poor, but Simon doesn't mind. Humming to the music, he pulls out what he found today from his bag and sorts them out. He remembers the trash lid he unreasonably took home, but felt an urge to dance to his favorite tune with it like a hat how the actors do. He pulls out an unsolved three-dimensional mechanical puzzle cube with nine blue, chartreuse yellow, green, pink, purple and red stickers covering the six faces.

"Oh." Simon sets it aside, thinking about how to solve it later. He then pulls out an eating utensil with a hollowed out bowl of a spoon with tints of a fork at the tip. Simon never saw one before. He stares at the collection of spoons and forks, confused.

At his wits end, he sets it in between.

Finally, he picks out a handheld, rectangular metallic object out of the bag, without looking, he flips a switch, and the rows of shelves rotate to reveal a box full of them. He places it in with the others, and carefully aligns them.

_Perfect_! He nods in approval to himself over the precision of his work of placing one of hundreds of lighters in a single mass.

Finishing his collection, Simon draws his attention to new music coming from the video playing on the screen.

It's not like '_Put On Your Sunday Clothes_' where it was so cheerful and energetic. No, this one has a soft, slow, and sweet sound. A male actor sang along with a beautiful woman on the TV screen, in a passionate tone, gently holding her hand and all the while, kissing her.

Instantly mesmerized by this image, Simon slowly brings up his cassette player and presses RECORD without looking away from the TV screen.

"_And that is all…that love's about…_

_And that is all…that love's about…"_

Fazed by the image before him, Simon thought of the picture itself as the concept of something he doesn't understand, but just knew. Something he learned to be a happy feeling, called "love."

"_That it only…took a moment…_

_To be loved…_

_A whole…life …loooooong"_

Simon stood there, fazed by the song. It seemed so warm, so safe, so full of kindness and care. To hold a woman's hand, feeling all of her warmth run through and feeling it to be the whole world. It felt like the greatest thing in the universe, having another being giving him or herself to you and you give him or her all your emotions and feelings for one another, if he could experience it himself.

Becoming lost in thought, Simon realized he held his own hands, the coolness of his metallic hand grasping his flesh hand snapping his senses out of trance, filling the void of isolation instead of the warm fantasy of warm company of a beautiful woman.

Pushing those thoughts in the back of his mind, Simon grabs his bag and goes outside.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

The hot sun disappeared below the horizon giving way a remarkably purple evening twilight along the western horizon. Pooka sniffed around outside the truck as Simon cleans out his bag. The winds slightly picking up felt good on his scarred, bare chest after a long day, it was among the only forms of physical comfort he knew, even over sleeping.

A small hole in the brown clouds above opens up. Simon takes notice, pausing and looked up, entranced by a sight he seldom beheld. The polluted clouds parted to reveal the darkness of outer space, a void of incomprehensible vastness and the realm of existence for billions upon billions of stars shining all at once, lighting up the sky like diamonds.

He has never seen a starry night sky, at least not one with starlight bright enough to shine through the haze and the trash somehow in orbit, a beautiful sight like seeing the whole universe for all it was for the first time.

Remembering the word beautiful, Simon presses PLAY on his recorder. The soft and loving tune of '_It Only Takes A Moment_'played out.

With the song in the background and the starry sky above him, Simon allows his mind to wonder, remembering about the ideas of beauty, companionship, and love. It must be a wonderful thing as the rarity of a clear night sky. Something so inviting and majestic like the infinite reaches of space, the distant stars and worlds that harbor the secrets of life and the unknown was what must be like people holding hands.

"Maybe..."Simon thinks aloud.

"Beautiful is up there." Just imagining how beautiful love was. Wonderful. Heavenly. Unreachable...

As comforting and inviting as the song and sky say about how great a thing love can be, yet just like the stars, something he can never feel, grasp or hold. It wasn't something in the air he catches like a paper leaf in the wind. There is nothing he could ever grasp on this world to feel so loved, Simon was just one chipmunk, possibly the only humanoid being left, stuck on a lonely planet and no one that he knows, probably in all of humanity, even exist.

Simon felt the sky entrancing and haunting to him, having seen a rare, beautiful thing that reminded him he could never treasure it personally, as if taken from him. He somberly looks up into the sky with the eyes of an abandoned child...

_Maybe…love… is up there. _

Simon feels something all too familiar, something he felt since the day he never had any form of contact, if Pooka qualifies for any exception, not just in population count but also in relation or significant bond to any human being. He felt this way since losing his fellow workers, including the other humans who fled Earth. Not since as far as his memories could reach. Certain images of a furry face chipmunk woman with thin framed glasses and excess brown hair on top of her head who brought him to this world of all worlds called a mother only a distant memory. After that image in his head, he knew he was probably an orphan raised in this ugly world by the brutal hands of nature with only his fellow workers to care for him until they all died when he was still young. He was only taught to read, speak, survive, science minus atmosphere and collect trash, nothing else until he joins his fallen brethren the day he drops dead as well, spent and worked to death like everyone else.

He worked and worked as told, unfazed by his dead and dying coworkers even when some tried to kill him for survival necessities. All he could do is run and hide, and do what he could to clean up, to do his routine, his directive, his down to earth job until he dies, the purpose he been unwillingly given. He cursed everything that happened to the world he now solely resides, for causing the roots of the problems for him stuck on Earth to watch everyone he knew died then trapped on a planet by himself, causing the feeling to transpire in the first place. Questioning whether he was fortunate to have lived through what no one else could, he doubted the purpose of his very existence. For him to have such feelings, he knew of this feeling since his first memories but never realized how bad this feeling was, over the long untold years of his life on this world until now…he was all alone...

Simon snaps back into reality. He could barely hear his music from a raging howl sound and felt his skin tingle from a fast-blowing cold wind into his bare chest. He notices the winds are fast now and the hole in the sky gone. He looks around to assess his surroundings.

On the right side of the horizon, something big amassed in the distance, growing upwards, forward, and fast in an enormous wall of dust heading straight for the city outskirts, toward his home, darkening the sky in its wake; a sandstorm.

These things were deadly, seeing firsthand their seer power and barely survived several sandstorms. Simon hastily cleans the rest of his bag and closes the hatch but froze when he forgot Pooka as the mutt barks outside. He lowers the ramp again.

"POOKA!" She watches the dog get back in and manages to close the ramp in time just as the first columns of dust started blowing into the truck.

Once safe, Simon slumps to the floor, getting over almost being caught outside in a sandstorm.

Pooka whines to Simon in a pleading voice. Remembering he hasn't fed the dog or himself yet, Simon gets up and finds a stack of Buy N' Large sponge cakes, canisters of collected rainwater, and canned beans. He unwrap a golden sponge cake filled with creamy filling for Pooka and he greedily bites it away from Simon. The chipmunk then unwraps one for himself as he opens a small compartment in his prosthetic arm, containing small hand tools, and pulls out a knife. He opens the canned beans with relative ease and eats one of the only sources of food he has had as far back as he can remember. Aside from collecting polluted rainwater, what else was there? It's better to be malnourished than dead from starvation.

He notices Pooka already dozed off. Tired and exhausted himself, Simon decides to turn in for the night.

Simon removed his metallic blue glasses and, in one well-practiced movement, slid the joint off his detachable prosthetic arm from its arm-attachment, and placed it on a shelf nearby. Sleeping with a prosthetic is very uncomfortable on the lump where his forearm used to be.

He switches the Christmas lights off, slipping into the hammock in the pitch black interior, unable to sleep so easily with the creepy howl of the hurricane-force winds always gave him a spine-tingling chill. Adding to that, his thoughts ran freely about the just-discovered pain of loneliness in his isolation from humanity, with no one and nothing to comfort his suffering.

He always endured suffering alone, but now it began to get to him, the core of his being slowly and surely eroding, going to break down eventually, physically and mentally as it did to his comrades.

As the night darkens and the sandstorm worsens, it gets colder, sub-freezing. Even in the confinement of the truck, away from the one hundred fifty kilo per hour blast of dirt and rocks, he curls up against the cold in his hammock, like a baby. His only source of warmth and comfort is the loving tune of '_It Only Takes A Moment_.'

He turns it on though the music reminded him of something he can never have, being able to requite his loneliness, the soothing music the only thing that felt like a mother cuddling a child, or a loved one comforting him to sleep.

Grabbing the nearest shelf, Simon rocks his hammock like a cradle, closing his eyes and drowning his hearing into the song, giving him _some_ peace over the hellish gale-winds howling outside.

Eventually, exhaustion prevails over his dreadful thoughts as Simon finally falls asleep.

* * *

Simon is based on his 80s/90s incarnation who only has two prosthetic acquired from injury and/or birth defects. He has a pacemaker which will come up to serve a purpose much later in the story. The prosthetic right forearm is similar to the mechanical arm of Anakin Skywalker from STAR WARS II & III and it incorporated some smaller scale devices used in the movie (like a cutting laser or tool compartment for instance) and serves Wally to help lift heavy objects despite his small stature, keeping him close the humble and ancient mechanical robot he is in the film.

If you noticed, the stickers on the Rubik cube each represents the trademark color of each _Chipmunk_ and _Chipette_ with the exception of Eleanor. Since she and Theodore share the same color, I gave her "chartreuse yellow" which is a yellow color mixed with a small amount of green. Chartreuse is a color halfway between yellow and green named because of its resemblance to the green color of one of the French liqueurs called _green chartreuse_ introduced in 1764. The first recorded use of _chartreuse_ to mean the color that is now called _chartreuse yellow_ in English was in 1892.


	4. On the Job

**Victory's Raconteur:** Wonderful to hear from you Vic! :)

**trex841: **Hmm, I thought we were left off during the *date* scenario . . .

**rfollman: **Yes, I am glad you are enjoying this!

**DISCLAIMER!**

_The Chipmunks _are an American music group of singing anthropomorphic chipmunks owned and operated by **_Ross Bagdasarian Jr. _**and **_Janice Karman_** under **_Bagdasarian __Productions_**, formerly **_Bagdasarian Film Corporations_**.

_Pooka_ is a fictional dog in the 1997 animated film Anastasia, produced and directed by _**Don Bluth **_and _**Gary Goldman **_at**_ Fox Animation Studios_**.

* * *

A warning sound goes off, disturbing the silence of the dark truck interior. Simon's simulated pacemaker flashed a red light reading: _WARNING! CHARGE LOW! _

Simon stirs, groggy from semi-nightmare-free sleep. His eyelids weighing a thousand pounds as he tries to awake. Groaning as he tries to move, Simon falls out of the hammock in the dark, crashing onto the metal floor with a thud. It's so dark he can't find where he landed. He now has a headache from falling face first, and not fully conscious enough to note his detached prosthetic arm, failing to pull himself up.

"This is gonna be a bad day…" Simon groggily commented as he holds his splitting headache.

Feeling his way along the wall with both hands, Simon finds the lever to the door. A sudden and unpleasant sensation stirs him more awake as the sun's rays pour in, blinding him, followed by the sting of cold wind on his bare torso, and the loud roar of the hydraulic-actuated ramp lowering. At least he's up now to charge his pacemaker.

He doesn't fully remember why he had one to begin with but long ago, he along with others he knew had impulse-generating tissue fail to sense a heartbeat within the normal beat-to-beat period that stimulated the ventricle of the heart with a short low voltage pulses. Those who were born with a block in the heart's electrical conduction system or because the sinuatrical node is not fast enough had an artificial pacemaker implanted, designed to treat bradycardia. As far back as Simon could remember, he had the heaving but everlasting artificial cardiovascular device that maintained an adequate heart rate, keeping him alive. All he had to do was keep it charged and he'll stay alive.

Now outside, Simon flips open a control panel to the truck, holding a long cable attached to his artificial pacemaker as he plugs it into the truck. In a split second, a generator activates from the plugged device, transferring energy from solar panels mounted on the roof of the truck. In an instant, the electrical charge temporarily zaps him, now fully conscious and charged. He shakes the last bits of sleep off as he walks back inside to prepare for the day.

_What day?_ he wonders. It's the same thing for who knows how long. Yet it's the only thing he can do, giving him what he thinks is his purpose, but could use a change, with more living beings to talk to, or a new routine. Remembering the film from last night, he shrugs off his thoughts of that possibility, for his life of collecting trash was all he ever knew or will know.

Zoned out so much, Simon accidentally steps on Pooka's tail, the dog letting out a yelp.

"AAaah!" They both jump. Pooka seems to be fine though. The creature has been through worse for Simon found him as a starving puppy wondering through the trash mountains, all cut up from sharp objects everywhere, but saved him from a landslide. Pooka on his nametag, he took him home, not that it made him feel less lonely like he just learned but like everything else he found, was very curious, Pooka himself too, but Simon kept an eye out for his well-being.

He points to Pooka and to behind him.

"Stay," he says with a stern look. Pooka does so and Simon seems to be satisfied. Now suited up with supply bag and shovels in hand, he walks off to work.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Scoop, shovel, compact. Scoop, shovel, compact. Scoop...

So annoying the way he knows how to carry out his task of garbage compacting. At a new spot in town, Simon shovels pile after pile into one of the many hydraulic compacters throughout the city. Usually making many as ten cubes every minute and preparing to make another tower along with all the monumental trash skyscrapers.

Occasionally Simon comes across something to add to his bag. One particular item, he examines with complete bafflement, is an article of tan fabric he doesn't recall. A strip of thin stretchable fabric connected to two large spheroid cups. Attached on the top of both cups were narrow strip of adjustable fabric making a loop to the back of the garment.

"Hmm," he slowly examines it for a second, bringing them close and over his eyes.

"Well . . . these certainly are not goggles . . ." He takes the garment off his face and tosses it into his bag.

Simon finds interesting artifacts later that day. One of them made distant beeping sounds from afar by pressing a button on an ancient tactile identification rubberized plastic key fob. Another one with a flat wooden paddle with a small rubber ball attached in the center via elastic string repetitively hits him in the face and a hand held cylindrical pressure vessel that discharged foam knocks Simon off his feet. Simon quickly chucks the foam displacement device far away.

The day drags on as cube after cube, and item after item is stacked away, Simon never stopping for anything, until he finds a big refrigerator in his path of shoveling.

Simon tries opening it, but it wouldn't budge an inch. Simon opens up his tool compartment in his mechanical arm and pulls a tiny, silver cylinder out. He pushes a button, and a red beamed pulse sonic laser emits, cutting through the fridge door like a knife through warm butter. The fridge door's fall off, revealing something Simon has seen before, in old tomes he borrowed from his studies.

_A living photosynthetic organism! _Simon looks at it in amazement, focusing his eyes on the simple weed.

"Oooooh!" Simon takes in the newly discovered living organism in interest. It looked so frail, so insignificant, but so alive, a tiny bright thing against the ugly brown world around it. Nothing compared to the inanimate objects he found. The object is obviously something special to look after, like Pooka.

He carefully scoops up the plant into his hands, and places it into the newly discovered old shoe fit for a small child in her bag. He wipes off a speck of dirt from it. This tiny thing now bewilders him it looked . . .

_Beautiful, _he thought.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Later that afternoon, Simon decides to stop for the day. Having found a few more objects to add to his collection, he makes his way home, his mind still on the plant he found. Thinking back to the word he used to describe it, beautiful, it truly was something different, but why, he could not figure out.

Contemplating his thoughts as he reaches for the door…something catches Simon's eye…

* * *

Next chapter we are introduced to EVE! Or . . . at least the _Chipette_ who will depict her . . . _Who _is it gonna be?  
A) Charlene  
B) Brittany  
C) Jeanette  
D) Eleanor

Pick your poison . . .


	5. 1st Encounter

**UniqueRosa Damascena:** . . . I'm guessing you're a huge Simonette fan?

**rfollman: **That's what I anticipated! Wanted to describe the objects without revealing what they are to the readers! That's all I needed to hear!**  
**

**trex841: **First question will be answered here and yes, the other Chipmunks and Chipettes along with Charlene will be appearing in the story

**Chipettesrawesome44: **Thank you!

**WALL-E and EVE In Love: **Wow I'm surprised to see a reviewer/writer from the WALL•E fandom under this fandom . . .

**DISCLAIMER**

_The Chipmunks _are an American music group of singing anthropomorphic chipmunks owned and operated by **_Ross Bagdasarian Jr. _**and **_Janice Karman_** under **_Bagdasarian __Productions_**, formerly **_Bagdasarian Film Corporations_**.

_The Chipettes_ are a fictional group of anthropomorphic chipmunk singers as the female counterparts of _The Chipmunks_ first appearing on the 1983 Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon series which the American production company **_Bagdasarian Productions_** holds the right to the characters.

The dog _Pooka_ belongs in the 1997 American animated film Anastasia, produced and directed by _**Don Bluth **_and _**Gary Goldman **_at**_ Fox Animation Studios_**.

* * *

"What the?"

Simon stares at the bright red circle on the ground, appearing to have materialized out of nowhere. Removing his ultraviolet goggles, keeping his corrective lens on, maybe he was seeing things. It either moved or flickered, something Simon never seen or read about while studying during his free time. Maybe it is another weird object he could add to his collection, but it doesn't seem right.

_What the hell is that?_ As he reaches to touch it, the red circle suddenly moves from him, to the other side of the bridge.

_If it's a bug, it's a species I haven't read about._ Simon sets down his things as he walks over to the mysterious circle. It moves again, as if trying to get away from him. He tries blocking it, but it continues to move. It does a slow circle around Simon. He tries to twist around to see it without moving, following the dot in a complete 360° circle and falls over. Simon feels foolish for falling for that failure of common sense, yet he is getting some fun out of it by chasing the little bright dot around. The dot finally moves down the bridge at high speed. Simon runs after it, trying to catch it, chasing the dot down the street and into the open Hudson valley.

Unknown to Simon, distracted by this one red dot, another dot appears behind him, then another, tens of them, hundreds to thousands of them, all in a giant circle. Appearing on buildings and quickly traveling down the edifices, streets, and into the dry river, all of them enclosing around the one dot Simon chased after.

Having chased this thing in circles, the strange dot stops in the middle of the deserted valley.

"Aha!" Simon triumphantly yells, oblivious to the other red dots enclosing him.

As Simon reaches to grab the dot but found it is just light.

"Huh?"

The other dots triangulate with the center dot. He notices the ground shaking and the air getting hotter.

"HUH?" Simon exclaims, hearing a low roar, something like the sandstorms, but different, like something fiery and mechanical. He looks up, finally seeing the source of the noise, small balls of fire in the air coming down right above him fast!

Screaming in panic and out of reflex, Simon runs in one direction to avoid the threat. The bellowing noise has become very loud, scorching hot and windy altogether. Simon losses his footing and is blown off his feet by the unknown object. A column of fire, smoke, and kicked up dirt filling the air with deafening sounds, suddenly winding down in a mechanical whir, all is calm.

Barely moving, Simon shakily risks a peak at the source of the noise and heat that knocked him down.

The dust still thick to see through but the ground now turned to molten black glass. Simon finally sees the object: a rocket ship.

He slowly gets up, still shaken but now knows what just landed. The spacecraft had three extended engines attached to a tall body. A Buy N' Large logo stretched along the side, along with the letters 'ARV' written in futuristic bold font. Simon cautious approaches this thing, wondering what it was doing here.

A whirring sound emits from the spacecraft, causing Simon to jump over the hissing of a hatch opening up at the rear of the unknown ship. Simon dives behind the nearest rock to hide, no more than a few meters away. Something lowers from the opening, a six foot long cylindrical capsule, made of translucent metal, Simon noticed a layer of frost covering the whole capsule, as if emerging from a subzero freezer being lowered by the mechanical arm and letting go of it, the object levitating a few inches off the ground longitudinally.

It looked like a cryonic tube but had no seams along its surface to form any kind of opening, if it was one solid piece. A holographic keypad appears on its spotless surface. Through the tinted layers of frost and the capsules semi-transparent material, Simon could make out a silhouette within the capsule. Its shape oddly enough resembled something akin to a body, or an object with long and uneven curvatures. It looks like this capsule held something...or _someone_ inside.

Simon watches on in fascination, sinking back behind his cover every time these machines created a loud noise. A smaller robotic arm emerges from the ship's mechanical arm, punching in some codes into the capsules keypad. As the last code punched in, the capsule emits a soft whir, getting louder and louder, like its getting ready to-

PSSSSSST!

Simon jumps in surprise as the pod suddenly hatches open, cowering behind the rock.

_What **is** that?_

Seconds go by without a single sound, drawing in a notion for Simon that all was clear. His curiosity gets the better of him as he hesitantly peeks over, the steam slowly fading to reveal…

An anthropomorphic chipmunk thawed, reclined lifelessly inside the pod but upon closer inspection, it was breathing. When Simon focuses clearly at the fully unfrozen chipmunk with the steam completely cleared, gasps at the sight.

The chipmunk inside the pod was a female, the most beautiful chipmunk female.

Jeanette.

She lays reclined in her thawed out cryonic pod in deep sleep, like a sleeping angel. An angel with dark brunette hair tied in a loose bun with a ribbon fittingly framed the prettiest face Simon had ever laid eyes on or the only face Simon has seen in his vivid memory. She was, to him, the perfect looking chipette: soft cheeks, delicate pink lips, a small pale pink buttoned nose, narrow jaw, skinny neck, and perfect fair patch of short light fur that looked smoother than the finest memory foam or silk.

The chipette suddenly stirred, awakening from suspended animation. She sleepily opens her eyes, turning over to sit up, and at that moment, Simon was suddenly transfixed upon the purist dark green eyes he ever seen with a twinkle in them akin to starlight.

Slowing stepping out onto the ground, she looks around, taking in her surroundings. She stood five foot seven inches. Even from afar, her voluptuous body looked impossibly stunning. She looked clean, healthy, and fresh from a long slumber in cryonic sleep, and she appeared to be young, around her teens. She wore some sort of high-tech skintight suit, matching the curvatures of her body, with state-of-the-art foldout holographic-pads, biodegradable scanners and a wide variety of scientific equipment strapped to her utility belt. She also had built-in anti-gravitational servomechanism onto her heels of her pale tint of azure color boots that matched her gloves strapped on her legs, her suit all a purple like the ribbon holding her hair in place. The ends of the ribbon ran down to the center of her small back, tied in a loose bow. Translucent nano-wires pulsate in her suit's circuitry, adding technological beauty to her physical magnificence that had more than stole Simon's breath.

Jeanette punches in a code on the cylinder she emerged from and in a second, the pod began to separate into pieces, folding into each other and shrinking until the entire thing was a pocket sized cylinder! Simon is amazed but still focuses on her. She places the cylinder into one of her many side pockets and pulls out some holographic pad from her utility belt, scanning the area around her.

Captivated by this maiden's impossible image, Simon watched her move with such fluid motion as if walking on air itself. The toxic waste not leave a single microbe of dust on her figurine, the sterility surrounded her like an aurora of her own light. Having seen nothing but this Earth's ruined landscape and its mountains of trash and the deceased for so long, the figure made it almost painful for Simon to see more of her, like staring into the sun. Being accustomed to the simplicities of what other humans and anthrop beings have left behind as treasures to him seeing her now, he looks at her like even the starriest night skies of the entire cosmos are nothing compared to her. The ugliness of the destroyed environment around her makes him feel out of place, his universe shattered.

She was, to him, the honest to god definition of "beautiful." He muttered under his breath, his head tilted, time seemed to slow as he feels a slow build of something inside, a sense of warmth and yearning ran through him, feelings of instantaneous attraction and longing he never felt before.

The ship's robotic arm retracts. Simon snaps out of his trance at the sudden noise. He ducks again behind his cover, unsure of what these machines were doing by themselves.

He kept his eyes on the chipette moving further away from the ship. A whirring sound heard, engines firing up.

_The ship!_

Simon runs to escape the approaching blast waves of the launching spacecraft. Unfortunately, the heat of the rocket engines blows Simon over his head several times a few meters away as the ship achieves lift off. In a few seconds, the roar and heat of its engines got quieter, the ship climbing higher into the polluted sky as it disappears into the clouds.

Shaken, having survived twice from being burned and blown away, Simon raises his head from a ducking position, making sure it's safe. All is calm again.

_Wait! The chipette!_

He looks around the dissipating column of smoke and dust, before spotting her a few hundred feet away unharmed, still surveying the ground if nothing happened.

She stops for a moment, looking up into the direction the spaceship took off if waiting for it to leave. She looks around her, all clear. She raises into the air, spinning lightly, her antigravity boots glowing, emitting no sound.

"Whoa!" Simon is fascinated further by the chipettes's ability to fly.

She stops spinning, her suit now changed into something sleek if it was supposed to move fast. In the blink of an eye, she fluidly whirls off into the distance, like a bird, eager to fly after a long time breaking away from a long slumber. The chipette felt the need to feel free.

She whips around, doing aerobatic circles, rolls, and loops. Simon whistles low at the display of such beauty of the woman in the air and her power of flight, he follows her fluid movements, trying to keep up with her incredible speed, almost going supersonic as she finishes a high loop. She makes a low pass over him, near the spot she took off. The chipette doesn't notice him, leaving him in the dust of her wake.

She moved flawlessly, quietly and smoothly, like dancing in the sky, the ribbon waving softly like swimming through water despite being in the blast of wind. Simon brushes off his glasses, from the dust cloud and still perplexed if she was a real angel.

"Awwwwh," he coos, love drunk at the sight of her swimming through the air at high speed, leaving indigo contour trails in her wake.

After swift movements around the trash towers, she hovers over the spot she started from, spinning flawlessly to a stop on the ground, touching down pretending she was a great dancer at the crescendo of a performance on an emissive stage, being highly praised.

Her hidden audience of one, still behind a large bolder gazed upon her with large, longing innocent eyes. As he watched her dance through the air, Simon felt if he should dance alongside her, like those actors in the movie last night.

_I wish I could dance like—No. dance like that…with her, _he wondered if he could hold her hand? Maybe kiss her? Simon realized he wanted, no, needed to see more of her.

Only now did Simon finally understand what the meaning behind falling in love meant, like the song, '_It Only Takes A Moment_.' He was now in love.

Too oblivious to notice his hand clipping away a piece of rock from the boulder and hits the ground ever so lightly, only giving off a drip of a pebble...

**KABOOOOM!**

It happened too fast. The rock he hid behind exploded in a bright blue-white flash and deafening crack of thunder.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Seen from afar, it formed a tiny mushroom cloud, the explosive sound alerted Pooka.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Jeanette stared down the direction where the sound came from, her high-frequency hearing detected movement behind her. Instinct kicked in and she whipped around in a millisecond with a high-powered Type-2 DEW plasma rifle at hand, aimed dead-centered at where she fired a single shot. Her eyes now shielded by a polarized visor and a holographic heads-up-display activated by her gun's wireless targeting system every time she drew it for better aim. Behind the digitized mask, her emerald green eyes now apathetic and cold blooded, like the eyes of a trained soldier.

She waited for the smoke to clear, to verify what the immediate threat was and if satisfactorily vaporized.

Apparently, she doesn't want anyone or anything watching her joy flight, the only fun she ever gets on her mission to Earth, or her 'directive.' After being in hibernation for a long period, she had to shake the last bits of cryonic sleep out of her system, fast as the instant thawing was. She is still not fully awakened and reactive. The last thing she needed is to be jumped or spied on.

The smoke clears, weapon still trained on her target, Jeanette doesn't move or blink. Only a portion of the bolder still stood, now inscribed with a giant smoldering three-meter wide hole, edge's glowing orange hot and stone turned to glass from the ionized blast.

_Hmm, at least my reflexes are still sharp,_ she thinks to herself as she holsters her plasma rifle to her waist strap with practiced Clint Eastwood style flips, her violet Head's Up Device deactivates, the visor dematerialize into thin air, her emerald green eyes now full of sweetness again as if nothing happened.

Jeanette returns scanning the environment around her in a gracious state again. She hasn't noticed a terrified chipmunk bundled up behind what was left of the boulder, trembling uncontrollably from having missed death by a fraction of an inch from the blast where his head had been.

* * *

As a side note, DEW is short for Direct Energy Weapon, a weapons that projectiles comprised forms of pure energy, electromagnetic rays or superheated gas such plasma, pulse sonic, particle beam, carbon lasers and ionized gas which looks like a downsized Covenant plasma rifle from Halo. For those who are not familiar with Halo, it's a science fiction video game franchise created by _**Bungie**_, owned and published by _**Microsoft Game Studios**_ that was released on November 15, 2001 (_Wikipedia_).

A fun fact is "Alice blue" is a pale tint of azure favored by **_Theodore Roosevelt_**'s daughter, **_Alice Roosevelt Longworth _** that sparked a fashion sensation in the United States.

And I will be using "Chipette" to define a female chipmunk throughout this story.


	6. Confrontation

**Chipettesrawesom44:** Thanks!

**WALL-E and EVE In Love: **Okay, saying the EXACT same thing on a review for both here and under my "WALLY: The Humanized Novelization! edited" is kinda getting old . . . **  
**

**rfollman: **Yes, EVE blowing things up happens to be my favorite parts as well.

**trex841:** Yes, was never planning to change who was going to play EVE. Alvin, Brittany, Theodore, Eleanor and Charlene will appear about halfway so keep your eye out! Although, unfortunately, Dave Seville and Beatrice Miller will not be appearing in this . . . though I may add Clyde Crashcup in a scene . . .

**Victory's Raconteur:** Mind explaining what _Halo_ is about? I heard of it and saw a couple of clips . . . is it about aliens or something?

**DISCLAIMER**

_The Chipmunks _are an American music group of singing anthropomorphic chipmunks owned and operated by **_Ross Bagdasarian Jr. _**and **_Janice Karman_** under **_Bagdasarian __Productions_**, formerly **_Bagdasarian Film Corporations_**.

_**Bagdasarian Productions **_owns the rights to the fictional anthropomorphic chipmunk singing group_ The Chipettes_ that first appeared on the 1983 Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon series.

The character _Pooka_ is a fictional dog in the 1997 American animated film Anastasia, produced and directed by _**Don Bluth **_and _**Gary Goldman **_at**_ Fox Animation Studios_**

* * *

Jeanette scanned everything everywhere she went, using a small paper-thin electrophoresis holographic-pad emitting rays of blue light forming a laser grid upon any object she came across. It processed their material make-up, verifying if it has any biologic content. So far, she hasn't found anything yet, only three processing beeps followed by an _Identified: Specimen Negative_ ping from her scanner.

She started her way from the landing site into Sector NA-001, going to survey from outskirt to outskirt, to find the object of his search. Jeanette have to do it fast, only given two weeks to scout out five hundred square kilometers of barren land on this polluted rock of a planet. She could enjoy a quick flight, though. She couldn't imagine who could survive out here with such sandstorms, extreme temperatures or the thick chemically tainted air.

That said person happened to be following not too far behind her as she made her way into the ruins of the Manhattan battery.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Simon kept his distance and staying well hidden in the cover of shadows and trash piles, staying behind her for the past couple of hours. He finally stopped shaking from almost getting blown to smithereens. When he worked up the courage to peek from the smoldering bolder, he noticed she was gone. His instinct told him to stay away from her as possible but something inside him told this is the first interaction with another being besides Pooka he has seen since as far back as he can care to remember, still drawn by his inquisitiveness to her. Sure she may be hostile but it's better having the opportunity to have something called "social interaction" for the first time in a while in his life and with a female of the same species no less than being totally lonesome. Having once again surrendering to his curiosity, he cautiously followed her.

The chipette's scanner again turned up negative on some pillars of steel structure in front of her, so she moved on. Simon went after her once she was out of sight, careful not to make a sound or give away any indication signifying he was there. That meant walking in tiptoe steps and holding his breath most of the time.

Now he dealt with another problem in his mind. How was he going to approach her and introduce himself without dying?

Simon's thoughts interrupted by alarm when he sees Pooka approaching the chipette searching through car tires in an automotive junk yard. Simon shakes his head to get his dog to come back to him but Pooka went on, striding down the piles of trash toward the newcomer.

"Oh no," he whispers, ducking behind cover, expecting the worst. He couldn't stand to watch his companion to get blown u-

_'**BOOMM!'** _

A burst of plasma engulfs where he saw Pooka. Simon gasps wide-eyed and gut-punched at the thought his only friend incinerated!

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Jeanette instantly whipped around with her plasma rifle, a cold stare on her face trained on a sound that startled her ever so lightly. It's the second time she had to do that and it's starting to get her that there is something drawn to her presence. The chipette is not going to stay spooked and the best solution would always be to destroy whatever unnerved her.

Through the smoke, a lone unscathed canine emerged from the blackened crater she blasted.

Pooka shakes off the last bits of dust from his fur as he approaches the chipette, his tail wagging. Jeanette lowers her weapon, an intriguing smile on her now friendly and gentle face. She holsters her gun and pets Pooka.

"Awww how cute! A member of the canidae family!" Simon heard her from his cover. She had the very sweetest sounding voice he heard, probably the most beautiful sound that rose and fell in smooth harmonious melody he ever heard before.

He slowly sneaks a peek over the tires, he is astonished that not only has Pooka survived but also the chipette has taken a liking into Pooka, examining him if she's never seen a real live mutt before.

Pooka playfully licked Jeanette as he got his head scratched and petted. She giggles when the dog's licking makes her ticklish. Amazed by her even sweeter and pure giggly voice and the fact his dog had managed to befriend a deadly chipette Simon allows himself a small chuckle of relief.

Very. Big. Mistake.

Faster than his mind could process he was being shot at, Simon's cover exploded into a blue ball of fire, his eardrums almost bleeding from the blasts.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Having detected a soft humanoid vocal sound behind a pile of tires, a chuckle as volumes as a scream in Jeanette's hearing enhancements, she instantly realized she and the dog were not alone. Worse, they were being watched.

In precision and speed, Jeanette drew her plasma rifle and quickly unloaded to where her HUD's sonic detection systems tracked the source of the sound behind a pile of tires.

Jeanette spots another life form, presumably and astonishingly, an anthropomorphic male chipmunk that's been stalking her. It cowered to the nearest cover. In a few shots, she blasts the stack of tires the figure uses to hide.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Panicked beyond measure, Simon's instincts kicked in as he cowers away to the nearest cover, also destroyed. Blinded by fear he makes a run for it, but finds himself at a dead end, realizing all the places to hide all destroyed.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

She finishes off blasting away the last tire stockpile.

_Gotchya, _she had the unknown chipmunk pinned down. No place to run or hide, he drops to the ground curled up like a baby, shaking in total fear, expecting the worst. She stops shooting, keeping her weapon locked on to him.

"You!" she shouts at him, the tenderness of her voice now cold and hostile as her eyes.

"Who are you? Why are you following me?" Simon doesn't answer, too terrified and trembling for words. She steps closer, never taking her eyes or weapon off him.

"I said 'who are you?' Respond!" Again, he doesn't say anything,

"ANSWER ME!" she angrily shouted.

He waited for the shot that will finish him off. It doesn't happen but the fear gripping him was convincing enough that he was as good as dead.

Not wanting to die without another look at the most beautiful creature he laid eyes on, he risks a peek at her.

Very slowly, Simon raises his head from under his hands, still trembling and curled up like a cowering child. The smoke slowly clearing, he can make out the sight of a purple silhouette of his attacker.

He first notices from the ground up a pair of Alice blue antigravity boots strapped to slender calves, then up to her thighs that were smooth to the touch. He looks up to see a very attractive banana shape torso, one with a waist less than nine inches smaller than the hip. Her narrow waist and the hardened muscles of her abdominal were visible through the skintight suit. He glances higher, but blushes a shade of red at the sight of two three-inch radius bumps on her chest known as her breasts. He also finds himself starring down the barrel of her plasma rifle less than a few centimeters from his forehead, its power cell glowing fully recharged.

She stood directly in front of him in a combat stance, her plasma rifle aimed right between his eyes. Simon didn't care, he's seeing her up close.

He continued his glances upward, from her strong, femininely structured arms and shoulders, up her narrow neck where the Alice blue collar meets furred skin, to her tenderly sculptured face that still possessed the delicate features of an angel with the face of a trained killer. Strands of hair came loose from the bun, cascaded all around her head, framing her face perfectly and glorifying her image.

Her dark, reflective visor shielded her eyes, expression was unreadable but behind the mask was a face as serious and emotionless as ever, a few threads of hair in her face. She looked him over, after a few tense seconds, her visor deactivates. At the sight of her emerald green eyes once again, time slows down for Simon as he drinks in her sight. The smoke has finally cleared and the sunlight was reflecting off her white suit. Overall, she looked seductively strong. Through his eyes, the curvatures of her body would intoxicate and inflict lust in any mortal, but she could also just as easily break every bone in his body. She is even more alluring, even in her dangerous state. She's like a beautiful, deadly goddess incarnate to him.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Jeanette now had a clear view of the cowering chipmunk before her as the smoke dissipated. Judging from his weathered humble attire, he was a worker. She also noticed a faded Buy N' Large logo, she realized if he was an actual surviving Buy N' Large cleanup worker, or at least a descendant of one who wore a scavenged uniform over a tattered long sleeved sweatshirt.

Looking over his pathetically weak physical state and the fact he is not armed, he was harmless as a fly. Yet she doesn't loosen her tense stance, he was following her and more of the reason to consider there is still a possibility of him intending to turn on her, so she's ready to blast him if she even thinks he is a threat. She could even kill him with her bare hands if she wanted to, for her advanced skintight suit had neural controlled strength actuators as thin as the cloth of her suit acting like an exoskeleton, giving her near-superhuman strength and reflexes, not including the bone and muscle enhancements given to her during training. Since this pathetic person was rail thin, she could break him in half.

Except, she doesn't feel too concerned to kill this poor chipmunk for there was something about him before her...

Their eyes made contact with one another. He saw the utter existence of pure awe and wonder in the laser-like stare of her dark emerald green eyes and she saw utter innocence in his large, fear ridden, and spectacled bluish-gray eyes. She lets her instincts to kill drain from her, but still in a defensive position to take action.

"Is this your mutt?" she calmly asked Simon, her voice a little softer this time.

He didn't know what to say. Wasn't she about to kill him or not? Simon realizes Pooka approached from behind the chipette motioning for his master.

He nods timidly, almost stop shaking altogether. He slowly reaches out for Pooka as he sits up a little. She pulls out her holographic scanner again and activates it on Simon, rifle still trained at him in a defensive stance. He is surprised at the bright light shining on him.

Three beeps and a negative ping sounded.

_What is that for? _Simon wondered if she is looking for something, because whatever it is, he wasn't it. Before he could say anything, the chipette holsters her weapon and walks away without saying another word.

Simon sat there in the charred ground of where she attacked him, completely fazed at the sight of her up close.

_She looked at me!_

He sighs lovingly at the clear mental picture of her in his mind but he didn't even say hello. He mentally cursed to himself. At least she let him live another day.

_Well that's a start._

* * *

If you noticed, _Jeanette_ isn't wearing her glasses for a reason that would be explained later on in the story. So, should she have her black glasses (first season of 80's cartoon and Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman), pink glasses (seasons two through nine of 80's cartoon & A Chipmunk Adventure) or the purple ones (CGI/Live Action)?


	7. La Veire Rose

**Chipettesrawesom44:** Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying this! Hmm . . . maybe I should give people ideas for deviantART drawings?

**rfollman:** Yeah, I couldn't decide of who should play WALL·E: Simon or Jeanette. So I had a poll (at least I think I did) and Simon was the most voted and he became the main star. I know I have a "Which Chipette should play EVE poll" and that's how Jeanette got to be EVE . . . than again, since I'm a joker/prankster/trickster, I intentionally had Jeanette in mind, knowing she would be out-of-character. I just wanted to see how many would vote for Brittany, Jeanette, Eleanor and Charlene . . . and because I already have the first chapter of an Alvin/Brittany story up and planning on having a Theodore/Eleanor story hopefully up soon . . .

**UniqueRosa Damascena: **Heh heh, I hope you don't mind me asking to mark your answer under my poll . . .**  
**

**DISCLAIMER!**

_The Chipmunks _rightfully belongs to both the late _**Ross Bagdasarian Sr.**_ and _**Ross Bagdasarian Jr.**_ as well as _**Janice Karman**_.

**_Ross Bagdasarian Jr._** and **_Janice Karman_** holds the rights to _The Chipettes_.

_Pooka_ is a fictional dog in the 1997 animated film produced and directed by _**Don Bluth **_and _**Gary Goldman **_at**_ Fox Animation Studios _**called Anastasia.

* * *

It was sundown through the windows of the abandoned shopping center. The quietness sweetened by the humming sound of Jeanette's antigravity boots as she glided in fluid motion over a heap of trash inside the building. She touches down and gracefully walks on the floor. Not too far behind her, the silence was broken again by the racket of Simon riffling through the trash, trying to get over it, his heavy duty boots kicking up dust and trash everywhere he goes. Eventually he makes it and quickly catches up to the person he is drawn to but cautious enough to stay far out of her way as possible now she knows he's here, Simon still feels fortunate enough to be alive after she tried to kill him, too drawn to her like a stray dog.

Jeanette knows he doesn't seem a credible threat to her, but him following her everywhere she goes made her feel annoyed, a distraction from her directive. Jeanette searched through the shopping center lobby as Simon watches her contently from the top of a flight of stairs. She suddenly looks at him over her shoulder, he jumps thinking she's gonna shoot him, ending up falling into rows of carts behind him. The situation becoming ridiculously humorous as he's trapped in a moving cart down a flight of stairs, screaming past Jeanette and into the shops front doors, he hit face first with the avalanche of carts pilling up on him, groaning in pain from hitting his face, a mountain of carts on his body. Simon is humiliated but at least he's alright.

Jeanette watched in amazement, knowing he's there for she can hear his footsteps from a mile away. In partial annoyance, she only shot a glance at the chipmunk, trying to make him flinch to shoe him off. It only ended him making a fool of himself by injuring himself. With a pile of a hundred shopping carts pinning him to the front door, a final cart bumps into the pile, making the sliding doors open as if it knew the irony of the situation, making the carts fall on top of him. She shakes her head in utter disbelief at the sight.

"Wow," is her only response as she tries to move on to the next area.

_A distraction indeed,_ she thinks to herself.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

A cloudy, sandstorm free night fell upon the peaceful city. The bright blue lights from Jeanette's scanner lights up the dark of the dead city. Simon sat atop a giant spherical oil container. He sat there gazing lovingly at the chipette who still did what she been doing since she first arrived. She scanned a run-down fuel processing plant in the city center for any signs of what she looked for.

Jeanette reaches a flat area, not far from Simon's position. She knows he's there but doesn't bother with him, for after her first day on Earth with a close encounter, she decides to call it a night. She pulls out the cylinder that's her downsized cryonic pod. She pushes a button and drops the cylinder. Before hitting the ground, it expands into its former, full-sized pod instantly. From afar, Simon cringes at the futuristic device, if it was gonna explode in front of her. He wasn't the one for surprises. The pod opened up for her, and she lies down in it tiredly yawning, she briefly glimpses Simon eying her from the fuel tower before the pod closes, she dozes off into much needed sleep.

Seeing the opportunity to get another close look at her, he steps down carefully from the tower but fails miserably when he slips and fell head over heels. It was about twenty feet and a loud metallic crashing sound following his screams echoing through the plant as piles of trash seemed to cushion his fall. He hit something hard, new bruises formed on his head but is otherwise all right. He doesn't mind, he had far worse injuries before. He looks over the pile trash in front of the building where the chipette took shelter. She hasn't heard him. Well, it should be safe. Simon tiptoes over to the pod. It was made of a translucent metal, strangely no seam lines for it to fold-up.

_So how could it be one solid piece_? he thought as he circles it.

_It must be a form of nanotechnology allowing different pieces of matter to fuse or separate at the atomic level._ The glassy appearance all foggy white as he can see the sleeping Jeanette through the upper half of the container. He stares through the glassy barrier longingly at her. She looked so peaceful, so beautiful. Simon presses his glasses and hands on the container, vexed by her image, the barrier blocking his view of her any further.

He hesitantly backs away, how was he going to communicate with her? Since he has been nearly killed by her a couple times, he thinks he shouldn't introduce himself directly. Being near her was tense enough.

"What should I do?"

He taps his fingers together, looking around as if an answer lay around somewhere on the ground, which turns out to be. He spots something in the trash pile nearby, a toilet rim and mop together.

"Hmm," he looks at them thoughtfully and back at the chipette. They kind of look like her in a way with the mops mud staned strains like her hair and the rim like her head.

"Aha!" Snapping his fingers, Simon begins riffling through trash, searching for whatever else he needs for an idea he formed. Pooka lays down on the ground nearby, watching his master pull out his tools, getting to work on his first real attempt to communicate with Jeanette. As Pooka eventually dozes off, Simon works through the night.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Come morning, Jeanette wakes up, seeming to have a peaceful rest. The pod opens up automatically as soon she was conscious. She gets out of the pod and it shrinks into pocket size, already to continue her mission...

"Huh?"

She stops at the sight of something before her. Some contraption resembling a work of art: a statue made of scrap metal, the arms and legs made of welded tubing spray-painted purple. There's a toilet rim with a some mucky strands of coarse yarn taped on top of it as a head with two Christmas tree decoration balls dangling in the center, emerald green like her eyes. She realized it was a poor rendition of her. She is bewildered of how this 'thing' got here and what it even was suppose to be anyway.

"Weird," she says to no one in particular as she takes in the image of the thing. Still confused, she shrugs it off as she walks past it to her job.

Hiding behind a rack of pipelines, Simon's heart sinks as he watched her reject his masterpiece.

He slaved over getting that thing done before she awoke and to do it right. All the chipette seemed to show was unimposing feelings with it despite Simon spending all night in the dark until mere minutes before she woke, for nothing. He berates himself for not doing a better job, how could he? He never was much of an artist himself and had limited materials and time. She still didn't acknowledge him in any way and sitting here wasn't going to do him any good.

"Dammit," he silently cursed, slightly dejectedly kicking the pipes, only to start the day with bad luck when the hundred pounds steel pipes come rolling down on top of him, screeching in surprise as a pile of pipes pinned him down. Now his art worthless, pinned by pipes too heavy to get out from, and… that's twice he made a fool of himself in front of her.


	8. Courting

**trex841: **Yeah I basically scrapped my poll idea and think I'm just gonna make a mix of purple and pink with a hint of black for glasses color

**rfollman: **Thank you for commenting, sure hope you enjoy the next chapter!

**DISCLAIMER**

**_Ross Bagdasarian Sr._**, **_Ross Bagdasarian Jr. _**and**_ Janice Karman_** are the rightful owners of _The Chipmunks_ under **_Bagdasarian Productions_**, formally **_Bagdasarian Film Corporation_**.

**_Ross Bagdasarian Jr._** and **_Janice Karman_** holds the rights to _The Chipettes _under **_Bagdasarian Productions_**.

* * *

Jeanette heard those responses before from her holographic pad. Usually when sent on the yearly reconnaissance missions to various terrestrial planets to find any trace of life forms, from microbiological specimens to full sized plants to verify if the planet is capable of sustaining complex life but hasn't found ONE on _any_ mission.

In her mind, she was basically sent on some getaways to new worlds for simple joy flights to get the feel of 'freedom' he imagined from this kind of work on top of making glorifying discoveries of life on alien worlds, all she had to do was have fun and look. Yet, the ease of searching for life for glory gave an empty promise to this job, having searched countless worlds across astronomical distances for even a tiny trace of life wasn't easy for a privileged cadet, only a certain few selected to explore outside of their own generation ships. Jeanette thought she could become famous by bringing back a microbe of a specimen and goof off if wished. She found no life, _at all, _throughout her line of work. Her drive for fame to become the first person to find a habitable world full of lush, green life waned out by mission after mission with the same directive and the same result: no plants and nothing to do but fly around. After six of searching here on Earth of all places, it gotten on her nerves, the mission appointed to Jeanette felt more like a 'down to earth' task as he calls it.

Jeanette shook her head, closing the hood to a rusted pickup truck she scanned, continuing her search to enclosed spaces where living things are likely to be hiding from the harsh extremes in this environment. She tries not to react when she surprisingly gets another reading from inside a toilet booth.

"_Identified: Specimen Negative._"

At least they would have some microbiological development that would be enough to satisfy her scanner's evaluation relay and to end her inane search so she could go back home. She guessed wrong. Groaning in frustration, Jeanette closes the door to the port-a-potty, contemplating her thoughts.

Home didn't feel free either. She would usually return weeks later after traveling in cryogenic sleep, debrief useless information, and then end up spending all year training for the next mission in a cramped starship, it all felt dull and routine. After a while, she hated traveling onboard the Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle in hibernation. Cryogenic sleep felt very uncomfortable to her, having to freeze and unfreeze hurt her skin and always getting confused too, having to wake up weeks later as if nothing happened and it interrupted her aging process. Despite the fact being only eighteen years old, she was technically younger by at least two years being chronically frozen for weeks at a time on several missions, slowing her age and prolonging her lifetime then getting back from missions only the worst part of a boring job. This directive something no one else wanted to do since no habitable planet ever discovered, but had to keep searching nonetheless. Jeanette would scout a planet surface once every five years instead of a group of scouts once a year, and they chose Earth, the least expectant of all impossibilities. The home planet long abandoned by her kind and humans for almost seven hundred years since the _Axiom_ and other Buy N' Large starships left with the population.

_So why search an already dead planet?_ Jeanette thought to herself, antagonized in her search of her next scanning. Even though she's never seen Earth, she didn't think she would since being born and growing up on the _Axiom_, Jeanette always dreamed of escaping the feverish cabin walls of the ship, having grown sick and tired of doing the same 'activities' as everyone else onboard that ship. Growing up, educated, and trained with her mindset onto the promises of timeless horizons of space looking for infinite worlds and skies to fly through, the ultimate freedom. Earth was so dead and pointless. Due to the fact Jeanette could only go where instructed, it made her think there isn't much freedom in anything. Her prolonged life felt as if to be maroon in routine, no matter where she went.

Her thoughts interrupted by yet another "_Identified: Specimen Negative_," after scanning inside a Buy N' Large replica of the Apollo capsule and slammed the hatch shut, failing to react not so angrily as she hard that negative chime.

"_Identified: Specimen Negative._"

All through the day, she got angrier and angrier by the minute at that sound after hundreds of readings. She finished what she thought would have productive results was in the cargo hold of an ancient Buy N' Large cargo ship in the late afternoon.

"_Identified: Specimen Negative!_"

_"_Aaaagh!"

Jeanette slams the cargo doors with all her might, screaming in frustration as she threw her holographic-pad over the railing and down to the dried up bedrock. Her actions only fueled the fire as she stomped away off the ship to go find her holographic-pad and stop for the day, not noticing a metallic grating sound from behind her.

Before Jeanette registered a tugging sensation on her, the circular magnetic disk attached to a cargo crane yanked her off her feet and pulled to the disk, her whole body immobilized by the powerful magnetic field.

"What the hell?" she exclaims at what happened.

_Oh bother! How could I forget this suit's magnetized material made of nanofabricated ceramic gossamer . . . _She tries budging to no avail.

_Made for skintight protective suits in the harsh environments of any extraterrestrial landscape!_ Still infuriated, she fidgets violently and flings the disk around.

_Thin, comfortably smooth, and its own form of clothing almost indistinguishable from Egyptian cotton. _She activates her antigravity servomechanism, trying to fly away, maybe swinging with enough momentum to break free.

_It is still metallic regardless of its characteristic structure, _Jeanette adds on to her thought as she almost makes it, but the magnet is far too strong.

_What idiot puts magnetic crane up for lifting cargo but doesn't take it off?_ she thought, cursing all sorts of things in his mind.

After a few minutes of trying, Jeanette finally lost whatever patience she had left. She wrestles her hand for the plasma rifle strapped to her waist. She struggles as she pries it out of its harness, as it is also metallic. Save for she has the barrel aimed at the magnet set to low power, she closes her eyes and pulls the trigger.

The bolt of plasma melts through the magnet, releasing Jeanette as she stops from falling with her antigravity boots.

Finally free to release all her rage and anger from the day of not finding what she's looking for on the ship, Jeanette unloads discharge after discharge of ionized gas projectiles, screaming and cursing at the freighter, blasting full power at the hull, superstructure, and especially the crane, twice for good measure. One shot hits the petroleum tanks, instantly lighting the ship up in a ball of fire as she continues firing at the disintegrated ship in a blind rage. The raining debris of fireballs and her stray plasma blasts causes nearby ships to explode as well, Jeanette's anger lighting up the dead valley like Hiroshima.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Simon watches in terror and awe at the sight of the chipette turned explosive on those ships, while trying to avoid flying flaming debris from his cover at a safe distance from the ship and _from her_ in this state. In the week she has been here, he tried to get close as he can to her but hadn't recovered his confidence to get her attention after building that statue of her and it took him a while to pry himself free from those pipes, not wanting to go through that again. After seeing the chipette full-blown rage, made him scared to consider going over to her.

Now back on the ground after finally stopped shooting, the chipette's beautiful face that showed murderous rage now blank from hopelessness. The chipette slumps over in defeat lost in thought, not taking any notice of the ships tilting over each other, creating a fiery domino effect. Simon notices she is clenched her fists, hiding her face in his knees, wrapping her arms around her lower legs, saddened beyond measure, closed up on not finding a single specimen in an entire sector.

Concerned, Simon feels something tug inside him. He loved her gracious self, but he couldn't stand to see her so depressed. Simon wanted to go over to her and comfort her however way he could. Disturbing her would most likely worsen her god-awful mood and he would risk incineration by her own fury.

It wasn't until then Simon notices a shining blue screen along the burning debris in front of him. He picked it up, recognizing it as the chipette's holographic-pad. He saw her throw it almost in the direction of his hiding spot.

"Hmm," Simon looks between the holographic-pad in his hand then to the chipette, getting an idea that might actually work. He could return this to her and maybe she will at least thank him, maybe get an opportunity to talk to her. He would do anything for this chipette to say at least a few words to him. He looks back at the chipette and back to the holographic-pad in his hand, making a decision of running the risk of her killing him, but at least he would try to get close to her.

_It's now or forever be a coward, _he thought as he composes himself with all his courage and slowly makes his way over to her side not without feeling a bit nervous.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Jeanette sat there unresponsive, face buried in her arms, exhausted from spending her anger and energy on the defenseless ship. Her eyes threatened to water, Jeanette thought for a moment if she could have just put her energy into flying away, feeling free from directives and frustrating as hell readouts. Having already vented her willpower to even move, there wasn't much she could do to ease her pain. She felt for the first time true hatred for her job, cursing the planets she visited to having no life and cursed her superiors for selecting her for this meaningless safari. She wanted to block reality immediately, she won't respond to anything, wanting to go home and away from this hellhole. She wouldn't look forward to returning home either, wishing she could fly away from this life if she could...

Slow, careful footsteps to Jeanette's left caught her attention. Her sonic detection automatically registered it as the annoying garbage chipmunk that kept following her around. She wanted to blast the irritating stalker on the spot, her plasma rifle next her, it's barrel still glowing red hot from firing continuously, its ion power cell fully drained and in need to recharge.

She heard another noise. The garbage collector sat no more than ten feet away from her, nervously shifted closer to her, tapping and fidgeting with his fingers as he whistled out of tune. Jeanette didn't bother with him, he seemed rather harmless to her.

Jeanette thought about the male chipmunk next to her. The way he kept following her and popping into her thoughts, something about him . . . She nearly killed him the first time they meet, she over-defensively presumed he was hostile, save for his innocent looks and curiosity the only thing present in his eyes. She remembers those eyes. The way he looked at her, he looked like a very lonely chipmunk, trailing her like a lost puppy. She also knew nothing could survive here as far as she could tell, being told all of the Buy N' Large cleanup settlements left on Earth died out long ago in six hundred, ninety five years of reconnaissance, the scouts sent from the _Axiom_ star liner never found a single survivor anywhere. How is it possible for this living, breathing worker to be here on Earth? Could he be the sole survivor of a long lost government on this planet?

Maybe he knows . . . even better, maybe he knows where to find what she's looking for, he the only thing in her search of Sector NA-001 he hasn't bothered with yet. She thought of more questions like who was he? Where did he come from? Why is he here? How did he survive this world? Her blossoming curiosity about him snapped her out of her gloomy state.

Only four feet away, he sat in an awkward position, apparently wanting to speak. Finally! She can do something useful on this meaningless mission and satisfy her inquisitive mind.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

_You can do this,_ Simon repeats to himself, trying to overcome the growing nervousness in his stomach.

He is over a meter away from her, she probably knows he's there and hasn't had the ability to kill him for the time being. He is neither relieved nor panicked, still sitting next to her in awkward silence. The only sounds are the cracklings flames from the burning hulks of the ships in front of them. He collects his composure, clearing his throat, ready to speak. He forgot what he was going to say, but he's going to say at least _something_ to her.

"So what's your story?" the chipette spoke, turning her head to face him.

"Ah!" He jumped at the sound of her voice and looking at him so suddenly, falling over on his back in surprise and close his eyes, preparing her to blow him away.

The chipette calmly tried to reach out to Simon.

"It's alright, it's alright. I'm not going to hurt you."

Simon had not expected that to happen. Simon realizes he was on his back and not dead. Simon sat up from the ground slowly and found himself in direct eye contact with the woman for the first time since she arrived. Only this time, Simon wasn't staring down the barrel of a plasma gun nor into the eyes of a trained killer. He glanced at a sincere chipette with no intention to harm him at all. She looked at him awaiting an answer, her emerald green eyes continued to stun him.

"You're very jittery aren't you?" Her voice soothing and friendly, she seemed amused by his anxiety at the slightest of her actions. It finally hits him.

_She's talking to me!_

"What's your directive?" she asks.

"Qual è la vostra direttiva?" she asks in a foreign language.

Still nervous, he tries to say something.

"Uuuh...Huh?" was his only intelligible response.

Jeanette blinks at him.

"You're a garbage collector, yes?" she asks him again with her sweet voice.

"Oh!" he realizes what she was saying.

"Um…uh…y-yes, yes I-I am," he stutters but not as nervous about her. Simon's voice sounded rough and dry, he hasn't used it for a full sentence in a very long time. Simon notices a pile of trash nearby, maybe he could impress her. He eagerly whips out his shovel and proudly scoops it all into a broken compactor nearby as swiftly as he could. The compactor grinds painfully as the rusted away gears try compressing the trash. At last, it spits out a cube, only for it to fall apart.

"Uuh….Tada!" he nervously triumphs over the sloppy cube.

"Oh." Jeanette looks at the fallen apart cube in mild amazement as if she never saw the act of compacting garbage before.

"What's your də**·**'rek-" Simon tries to speak, knowing the ice is somewhat broken.

"My directive?" she points to herself, which Simon nods.

"That's classified," she coldly says looking away, neither short nor cutting in her answer.

"Oh…sorry," he replies in defeat, mentally cursing himself.

Suddenly he remembered the holographic-pad she threw away. Simon quickly pulls it out of his pocket and hands it to her.

Jeanette looks at her holographic-pad in his hand, remembered chucking it over the railing because it drove her to madness, destroying a ship for not finding what she was after. She hates having to do that again or be reminded of it but he didn't know better.

"Oh." She takes it from his gloved hand, and examines it, it wasn't damaged and it's built tough for a frustrating job. At least she won't have to go look for it or replace it.

"Thank you, um-uh, what's your name?" she asks.

"My name?" he repeats.

"Yes," she looks at him for an answer.

He's never said his given name before or for as long as he could remember, speaking to anything or anyone in particular to share his name. He remembered it, it's even written on his uniform for that matter but hasn't said it for almost…forever. It's hard for him to say it.

"Uuuh…uhh." It's _really_ hard for him to say it.

"S…Sie," he takes his time.

"Sie…Sie-Sie**·**mən!" he finally manages to speak it.

"Simon?" the chipette repeats it perfectly with her harmonious voice.

Simon's heart went warm the way she spoke his name. He coos at the beautiful sound of her voice that rolls off her tongue as she says it again.

"Simon," she lightly giggles.

"That's a nice name," she smiles at him. He gazes lovingly at her.

"My name is Jeanette," she replies, pointing to her name patched on her arm under a single gold bar for the rank of second lieutenant and a green plant patch with Buy N' Large Navy - _Axiom_ E.V.R.E. embedded in it.

Her name is the most wonderful word Simon ever heard.

"Ch'netta." He tries to pronounce it but he isn't very good with phonetics either.

He tries again.

"Ch'netta," he fails once more.

"No it's like this: jə·NET," she says her name slower.

Simon put all his efforts into pronouncing it right, only to worsen his speech impediment.

"NED**·**ə . . ."

That slow stuttering sound made Jeanette uncontrollably giggle, he's trying so hard to get it right and his pronouncing of her name with an "a" sounded too cute. It made him look so adorable!

Simon is entranced at the sound of her laugh, her voice like music to his ears. He loved making her laugh so he says her name again.

"Netta."

She collects herself after a few seconds.

"You're funny. But the cognomen Netta sounds good to me," she says with a smile on her face, making him more drawn to her, now he's up close, personal and on friendly ground with the first being he has spoken to who knows how long.

The wind picked up, the atmosphere around them getting cold, the sand at their feet blew with the wind and the recognizable sound of howling draws Simon's attention away from Jeanette. Since the wind blew from behind Jeanette, he looks past her, and sure enough, a column of dust and sand headed their way fast.

"Oh no," he says half-panicking, his truck about a kilometer away and judging from the wind's speed and distance of the wall of sand, they had less than a minute before it hits.

"Netta! We need to go!" Alerted, he moves to grab her and run.

"Whoa, don't touch me!" Jeanette warns, drawing her plasma rifle on him. Simon stops dead in his tracks but she doesn't know what's happening.

"Netta look! There's a storm coming!"

Before she could turn around, the winds hit full force, leaving Jeanette dumbstruck of what happened. The sand now picking up and obscuring her vision, even her HUD is unable to shield her face. The gale force winds even extinguished the fires of the burning ships. Jeanette now disoriented in the blast of air and dirt all around her, difficult to not blown over. Suddenly she remembers Simon standing near her, only to disappear in the cloud of dust as the storm hit.

"SIMON! SIMON! WHERE ARE YOU?" she calls out to him, no response. It's so loud and visibility is zero. She panics, not finding any shelter, the only person who knows what to do is gone and she won't survive in this for long.

Suddenly she feels a rough, masculine gloved hand grasp her own for dear life. Jeanette may not see Simon but knows he's there.

"NETTA!" Simon screams to her over the blasting winds, he's still there, and she's going to live. His silhouette appears in the cloud of dust.

"DON'T LET GO! FOLLOW ME!" Simon calls out to her, placing his ultraviolet goggles on his face, guiding both to the only secured place.

* * *

The foreign language that Jeanette spoke is Armenian.  
The reason I chose that is because both **_Ross (Rostom) Bagdasarian _**and**_ Ross Bagdasarian Jr._** are both of Armenia descendents. Armenian is a landlocked mountainous country in the South Caucasus region. Armenia is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the _de facto_ independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic & Azerbaijan to the east and Iran & the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south.

For those who are curious, the vertically centered dot (** ·** ) placed in between the enunciated words ("NED**·**ə," "jə·NET," "də**·**'rek-" and "Sie**·**mən") is called an interpunct_, _which is used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. Speaking of pronunciation, the enunciation "jə·NET " is the English pronunciation for _Jeanette_. The French pronunciation of _Jeanette_ is "zha-NET."


	9. One's trash is another's treasure

**trex841:** Nope. Not even close. Some other characters will be there instead and not to sound like a correctionalist but in the movie, there were four other EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) probes on the ship along with the main EVE.  
To give you and everyone else a clue, Alvin, Theodore, Brittany and Eleanor will appear together after we meet whoever I have planned to be M·O. Charlene will appear seven chapters after the aforementioned Chipmunks and Chipettes make their first appearance. Happy guessing!

**MissSteph22:** Thanks! Um, have I seen your name somewhere before? ^^;

**Nickpilottilover:** Thanks for pointing that out! Got that corrected :)

**EmmetEarwax: **Just enjoy the story . . .

**DISCLAIMER**

Formally _**Bagdasarian **__**Bagdasarian Film Corporations**_, _**Bagdasarian Productions **_owns the rights to_ The Chipmunks_.

_**Bagdasarian Productions **_owns the rights to_ The Chipettes_.

_Olivia_ is a fictional orphan girl who took the role as _The Chipettes_ guardian.

* * *

The door opens as fast as it could, the sudden rush of sand and wind blasting inside shatters the dead silence of the truck's dark interior.

"IN HERE!"

Simon leads Jeanette inside, shielding her with his body. It was difficult to find the truck but thankfully, Simon remembered his bearings before the storm hit. Walking in one hundred, fifty kilometer-per-hour winds slow as a crawl, any further than a kilometer away, they'd be dead and buried for sure.

The door closes and all is calm again. They are safe. The settling dust causes Jeanette to sneeze and cough up sand in her mouth.

"Are you alright?" Simon asks, worried. Even though he's used to the harsh air, she wasn't.

"Yea-" a sneeze escapes her.

"-yes, thank you," she manages to say, little shaken.

She notices the darkness inside the truck.

"Where are we?" she asks, unable to see, even Simon.

"Hold on, let me get some light." He scuffles through the darkness, managing to reach the stack of batteries to the Christmas lights. He clamps in the cables and the truck flickers to life with every color of light.

Jeanette is amazed at the sight, the most stuffed space of random ancient objects she's ever seen. Racks upon racks of unique appliances, tools, toys, items, oddities, knickknacks, anything. The Christmas lights gave the interior of the stuffed truck a glow of invitation and enchantment. She slowly glides down the aisle of the truck, completely awestruck.

"Is this, your…living quarters?" Jeanette asks, carefully choosing her words.

"This is my home," he proudly says, spreading his arms out to give a welcoming pose. Jeanette notices Simon's make shift room, a sheet tied to metal poles, the playable ancient TV and Pooka's sleeping pad. She takes in the entire image of the trucks interior.

She looks at him for a second, wondering how could a person live in such a humble place and survive the hostile conditions of Earth. Compared to the living standards of her home, this 'home' is utterly nothing.

She changes the subject, trying not to think of low his life compared to hers. Instead, she quelled her curiosity of the truck's treasures.

"So...where did you get all of these things?"

"I found all of these in the garbage and collected them." The way he displays the forgotten treasures of humanity, seems like it's the whole world in here.

"It's incredible," she says, scrutinizing every one of them but jumps at the sound of what appears to be a singing fish on the wall.

"WHOA!" She draws her gun as if to shoot it.

Alerted, Simon rushes to her, not wanting any of his treasures destroyed.

"Netta, Netta, it's alright, it's just a fish."

She isn't listening now that the singing fish is also moving! Its tail and head flapping side to side, she takes aim.

"Ah! Netta! No, no, no. It's ok, it's ok. It's not going to hurt you," he calmly reassures her, trying to get her to lower her weapon. She looks at him and back toward the fish in nervousness, giving in as she holsters her plasma rifle.

"Oh, good," Simon sighs in relief as he becomes all jittery and excited.

"There's so much I want to show you!" he says with a smile on his face, riffling through the racks to find interesting things to share.

"Here," he shows her an eggbeater, but since this technology is hundreds of years old, neither of them have a clue what it is.

Jeanette takes it as Simon goes searching for more things. She gets very curious with the eggbeater, twisting its knob faster, faster, faster, and fast—the beaters fly off, she revved it too fast. She gasps sharply as one of his treasures came apart.

Simon heard the clanking sounds.

"What was that?"

"Um, uh, nothing. Nothing at all," she quickly prevaricated, hiding the eggbeater.

Simon finds a sheet of pliable, transparent plastic material with regularly spaced, protruding air-filled hemispheres.

"Lookie here!" he pops one of the bubbles. Taken aback, it looks fun and addicting to her.

"You try," he happily offers it to her which she takes it and sure enough likes it when she popped a bubble. She giggles as she popped all the bubbles as fast as she could.

Simon hands her a glass bulb connected to a screw pitched base. She takes it and as soon as it touched her fingers, it shone brightly.

"What the?" Simon takes the light from her, tapping it if broken before handing it back to Jeanette, maybe he imagined things. Nope, it lit up again.

"How'd you do that?" he asks amazed she could bring light to anything dead.

"I don't know," she replies, drawn to the light as well. Unbeknownst to both, her suit's nano-circuitry could transfer energy to anything electrical it touches.

Simon shrugs it off as he finds an unsolved Rubik's cube that she takes with utmost curiosity.

"Aha, I know!" he says, knowing something to interest her.

Ecstatic, he rushes over to the VCR, pulls out Hello Dolly and rushes back to Jeanette, who finished solving the Rubik's cube in the three seconds he took to get the movie.

"Oh," he utters in amazement, she's smart and fast. He looks at the cube, unconsciously handing Jeanette the tape and stares at the cube, doesn't even know what it was for.

"Oops," Jeanette's words brought Simon's attention back to her. He saw Jeanette's worried expression looking at the unspooled contents from a cassette in her hands.

"Ah! My tape!" he panics, grabbing it from her, trying to think of how to fix it.

"Oh my, I-I'm so sorry!" Jeanette tries apologizing. Quickly and clumsily, Simon's mechanical arm exposes a kind of flathead power tool that rewinds the tape, worried if it would work. He whips around and slides it into the VCR, turning on the TV. The static made him feel uneasy for his most prized possession.

Finally, the screen flickers on, the picture displays and sound activates. Simon cheers in relief to the tunes playing, the scene of the actors dancing to '_Put On Your_ _Sunday Clothes_.'

Jeanette stands next to Simon, relieved the problem she made solved. She stares at the TV and to him.

"It's looks fascinating," she watches the scene and listens to the movie with great interest. She records the scenes of the actors dancing with her tiny camcorder, mounted on her earpiece.

"Very fascinating," she says to herself as she steps closer, examining the movie like a scientist examining a specimen.

"Oh I know!" Simon jumps in excitement as he reaches the back of his truck, searching for something he found earlier: the metal lid. He finds it just where he left it and turns to Jeanette.

Simon greeted Jeanette by his dancing and humming along the tunes, with a trash lid as a hat, how appropriate.

_"...Put on your Sunday clothes there's lots of world out there…!"_

He dances poorly if for the first time but Jeanette can't contain herself as she giggles loudly. He's too cute for her when he does that.

"Now you try," he politely asks, spinning to a stop from his last move.

Jeanette is baffled, she never danced before either except for in the sky but she tries anyway.

"Okay," thinking it to be challenging, she uses her enhanced abilities for her movements.

Too much speed and strength combined. Simon tries to stay calm and polite, stepping back from her frantic dancing form. She mimics his last dance move, spinning like helicopter propellers.

"Okay stop, stop! STO-" She strikes him in the face and sends him flying into the metal wall.

Jeanette stops gracefully, not fazed or dizzy at all. She notices Simon isn't present, how can he disappear in a truck?

"Simon?" she asks in confusion.

She looks on the ground and against the wall where Simon groaned from the impact of such force, like being hit by a car and putting a sizable dent in the aluminum wall.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Jeanette gasps.

"I got carried away, are you okay?"

He seemed unharmed but a lens from his glasses broke and he sustained a black eye. Concerned, Jeanette tries to help him up.

"I can fix that for you."

"Oh no, no, no, no, I-I am okay. I have spares," he says, getting up but trips over some of his stuff on the floor, only capable seeing only blurred images without his glasses.

"Are you sure you don't need help?" Jeanette asks, watching him feel the shelves, but kept tripping and bumping his head into things.

"Oh yes I am okay, I know wher-" CLANK!

"OW!" Simon hits his head against the top shelf but manages to finish his sentence.

"I know where to find my glasses." Simon finds his way to the shelf of personal items of new glasses, replacement prosthesis, pacemaker batteries and so forth.

"Aha! Problem solved," he says triumphantly, holding up a new pair of glasses.

"Oh, good," Jeanette is relieved she didn't seriously injured him which Simon taken aback that Jeanette is now more caring to him. She focuses her eyes around to find something new.

Jeanette finds Simon's lighter collection, something new to her indeed. She picks one up, carefully studying its appearance, wasn't it used for something?

"I have no idea what those are," Simon said as Jeanette sat down not too far from him.

"I just collected all of the ones I could find though."

She pulls on one side and it clicks open. Curiously, she presses a button and a tiny little flame sparks to life, captivating Simon and Jeanette.

As they stare into the flame, Simon felt the warmth emitting from Jeanette's skin, realizing this. is the closest he has been to her. He looks at her, still oblivious to their intimate position, staring at the flame.

Simon took in the image of Jeanette, the light emitting from the Christmas lights and from the tiny flame glowing on her figure but saw the warmer glow of her beautiful face, his infatuation for her grew. He tilted his head to one side, his mind lost in the magnificence of her vivid emerald green eyes, staring into them as if into her soul. So beautiful it almost hurt to look. He hears familiar tunes playing in the background, the soft ballad of '_It Only Takes_ _A Moment_' made it feel he stared at the night sky that day before she arrived, its timeless dark horizon twinkled of constellations so mystifying and captivating, beheld the most mysterious things of life beyond mortal grasp. Simon felt Jeanette was a goddess sent from the stars, his silent prayer for finding love right in front of him.

He remembered the song playing in the background, the man and woman kissing and holding hands, proclaiming their affection for one another only took a moment to fall in love. Simon finally understood what the lyrics meant and he knew what to do.

His eyes down from her eyes, down her arm and to her fingerless gloved left hand lying limp on the sheet they sat on, mere centimeters from his prosthetic right hand. Simon gulped. It seemed so simple in the movie to hold the woman's hand, telling her everything you wanted to tell.

_But what if she rejects me? Worse, decides to shoot me?_ Easier said than done, Simon tried to build up courage within himself to make his move, sweating. They were still in awkward silence, Jeanette distracted by the flame. Over the intimate situation and setting, he decides to take her hand immediately.

He slowly raises his right hand, his entire body shaking and his mechanical arm made a faint clattering sound as his prosthetic's neural processor registered spiking stimulus patterns of stress in his brain, enacting the proper effects of anxiety like the shakes. He mentally cursed his replacement arm for having such a give away to his shyness, it wasn't that far to her hand, but mere centimeters felt like kilometers.

He opens his fingers.

_Ok, that's a good first step,_ he reaches down…slowly.

He closed his eyes, preparing for the worst . . . if he is rejected and she decides to blast him to bit on the spot.

He hoped for the best that she somehow loved him back. He pictures in his mind of them being locked in a passionate embrace, singing to the orchestra of '_It Only Takes A Moment_' and the happiest of endings, his dream come true. The thought finally brings out the bravery in him to touch the skin of her fingers…

Jeanette turns her head to Simon, eyeing him questioningly and suspiciously when she sees him reach for her hand with his eyes closed.

"What are you doing?"

He pulls his hand back in reflex, half-choking/yelping, thinking he was caught or he touched her hand and was about to die.

"Ah! Oh um-uuuuh, uuh, n-n-n-nothing, noth-thing at all! Yeah that's it! Doing nothing at all!" he denies half stuttering out of impulse and fear, confidence and fantasies shattered into a trillion pieces. He sheepishly fidgets as if trying to convince her he was doing something akin to nothing.

Jeanette looks at him as if he's the most bizarre creature she's ever seen, oblivious to what Simon tried to relay to her.

"Uuuh Oooo-kay," she says to him in unease, wondering what he was up to.

"Oooh!" Jeanette is drawn to the TV where '_It Only Takes_ A Moment' played, preventing her from pondering about Simon's strange behavior.

Simon mentally kicked himself for cowering from his only chance to connect with Jeanette. He noticed Jeanette became very interested in the movie as well. He sat there in thought trying to come up with something to reel her to him. She was interested in the things he showed her, so what hasn't he shown her yet? He's shown her pretty much everything of his life on Earth in just minutes, there wasn't much lively to look at.

_Wait, lively! THAT'S IT! THE PLANT!_ Suddenly remembering the garden plant he found earlier, the only thing she hasn't seen and it's something he's never seen before either.

"Netta! I just remembered!" Jeanette draws her attention from scanning the scene on the TV.

"I found something a few days ago and I want to show you!"

He rushes over to the shelves but since the whole truck had something in every one of the hundreds of shelves, he can't remember exactly where it was.

"Uh, one second," he says as he frantically continues searching through the shelves, causing such a racket that a drum came down on his head.

"Ow!" Looking up in the direction of where the drum fell, he fumbles back on the drum as he loses his balance.

Jeanette silently giggles at him as he searched around his home. He is, indeed, adorably funny in her eyes, very cute even, especially for someone like him who survived here. Jeanette looks at the lighter in her hand and back at the closing scene of '_It Only Takes A Moment_.'

She thinks of how someone like him could see something so special in things humans and anthropomorphic beings once greedily took for granted or if it were a dumb invention. To Simon, he saw things far more than they were in all his treasures. There was something about Simon that made her more curious and drawn to him, wondering if the things she felt were of what, attraction? How? He is far below her in status, not to mention he does not have much of an attractive male physical appearance according to female terms.

She is a naval vegetation scout for the Buy N' Large interstellar fleet and he is a custodian for a government that no longer exists. How could such unlikely people create such a connection among them?

Jeanette flicks the lighter on again, the tiny flame coming to life, reminding her of the things she remembered as beautiful. The warmth of being loved or loving someone, like the way her adopted parental figure Olivia cared for her when young. Then she remembered the beauty of the stars seen from the _Axiom_. She loved them as much as her loved to fly, the greatest things that brought her warmth but didn't know why. It wasn't just for the sense of freedom for freedom is a perspective. What she loved is it's just cause, because she wanted to. She compared it to a possibility she thought of if she and him were somehow connected

_Could they be attracted if they wanted to?_ she thought. Maybe there was more to it than just social or status common ground. The way he looked at her, at the times she caught him staring at her like the greatest thing ever.

_Maybe, he sees something in me that no one else could. But what exactly?_

Simon tapped her shoulder, breaking her train of thought.

She turns around to see him standing before her holding an old shoe. Something green inside the shoe got her attention.

"Oh!" she exclaimed with great interest. She looks at the green object in scrutiny.

_Wait a minute!_ Her practiced eyes realize the familiar green looking object.

She pulls out her holographic pad and scans the object. Three pings and then, a pause as it processed what it looked at.

"_Identified: Specimen POSITIVE - Ailanthus altissimo sprout - Biologically functioning_."

It pinged with a confirming sound. Jeanette's eyes shot wide open, his mind unable. process what she looked at is a real photosynthesizing plant!

"_Specimen Confirmed Positive, Directive A1-01: Recon & Nettaluate Positive Biological Lifeforms - Accomplished, Initiate - Directive A1-02: Return To Axiom Superior!_"

At that moment, her mind truly unable process for an automated program took over, her neural implants possessing his mind and body.

She starts to convulse violently, an inhuman automated sound coming from Jeanette. Simon is caught by surprise and fear, he steps back scared as if she's going to blow up. In his mind, he is scared beyond measure for her.

_WHAT DID I DO?_ He panics in his mind, his feet locked in fear of what's going to happen next.

It happened instantly. A brainwashed Jeanette yanks the plant out of Simon's hands and places it in the special biological specimen container strapped to her belt before yanking out her downsized cryogenic pod. It automatically sizes up around her in the event these things happen and cryogenic ice suddenly encases Jeanette. The cryogenic pod's seams seal shut with a solid click, never to open for anything or anyone. It drops to the ground with a thud.

Only a steady pulsating green light with a leaf planted over it emits from the pod.

"Whoa," was Simon's only reaction to what happened.

He steps over to the pod and sees Jeanette in suspended animation inside, frozen in her blank, catatonic pose, her eyes closed and her hand clutching the plant container for dear life. She looked clinically dead in the pod, just like when she first came here.

"Netta?"

Simon taps the pod as if to somehow get her attention, receiving no response. He leans against the pod to hear for any signs of activity within it. Besides the pulsating green light, nothing.

"Netta?" he panics, shaking the pod to awake her. Nothing happens.

"N-N-NETTA!" His cries for the now frozen and unresponsive Jeanette echoed through the truck, through the storm and through the night as he tries getting an answer.


	10. Rain Drops Keep Fallin'

**rfollman:** Same response back in chapter five and yes, geniuses tend to falter at times . . . though if you have any ideas on how to describe an egg beater, I'll be happy to accept! : D

**trex841: **Dunno, I didn't had that in mind

**DISCLAIMER**

Alvin and the Chipmunks rightfully belongs to both _**Ross Bagdasarian Sr.**_ and _**Ross Bagdasarian Jr.**_ as well as _**Janice Karman**_.

* * *

Come morning, twilight crept over the eastern horizon, the sandstorm calmed down overnight but Simon hasn't. Wide-awake and worry sick since Jeanette put herself into hibernation, thoughts of her being hurt or he did something wrong that made her shut herself off from him ran through his mind. Since then he tried arousing her to no avail. Simon still tries, not willing to give up on his only friend despite the fact Jeanette was chronically frozen in place and clinically dead, unresponsive to Simon's cries.

He sat there staring at her pod in the truck for hours after countless attempts of pounding on it to awake her. He kept thinking of how to get her out, to bring her out of the freezing shell and back to life. He did not know how though…

"Aha!" He snaps his fingers.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

The sun now above the horizon, Simon moved, or better yet, labored Jeanette's cryogenic tube outside, to where he would get his pacemaker recharged at the same time. Her pod, though not bulky, but very heavy around three hundred fifty pounds because of the density of the great cytogenetic residual ice inside the pod combined with the density of Jeanette's frozen solid body. It took him an hour or two of pushing the pod out of the truck, down the ramp and into the sunlight. Manual laboring didn't help Simon take his mind off Jeanette but he at least got her in the sun's warm rays in the expectation for her to awake.

All he could do was wait and see if the sun could melt through the pod's -100̊° C chassis. He stood by her side on the bridge, staring at the frozen figure of Jeanette, waiting for the ice to thaw out and let her go so he could see her warm open eyes and hear her voice again.

He lets those happy results run through his head as he waits patiently….

…And waits… …and waits… …and waits…

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

By now, the heat of midday's sun beats down on the surface as hot as it will irradiate, almost unbearable, even for Simon. Though he grew up here, it's the hottest summer on Earth he's ever experienced. He sat down on the sizzling concrete of the broken bridge. His work suit and fur soaked with sweat and his mouth crisp dry from dehydration. Simon doesn't care for he's more concerned on Jeanette waking up any moment now, the same thought that's been running through him for the past few hours.

He looks back up at the pod where the frozen Jeanette laid since this morning. Air temperatures hit 50˚C or 122̊°F outside and not a single drop of condensation dripped from her pod. Simon drops his head down in disappointment, nothing, after hours of waiting, has happened.

_Patience__,_ he told himself, reassured she would eventually thaw.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

It's almost sundown, Simon only slightly bored and Jeanette is where she was at, motionlessly frozen in her pod where he put it, its green light still pulsating. He fiddles around with his tools on the sizzling ground, wondering if he could work his way through the pod to release her. Sorting through what he could use, he hears rumbling sounds in the distance.

He looks up to see darkness spread across the horizon. It wasn't a sandstorm, for the air did not kick up dust. These columns of clouds all dark gray and towered high in the sky, flashes of light visible in the blackness where the soft earthshaking sounds came from.

"Uh oh," he realizes it's a storm.

Seems it will be over them by nightfall, which is not long. Though they are not as powerful or deadly as a thunderstorm, it is still serious to find shelter because of flooding and lightning, witnessing some of his comrades suffer those fates, nowhere to hide from Mother Nature and died in the rain.

Simon had no idea how durable Jeanette's pod against the weather but just because it's hi-tech doesn't mean it can last out here. He won't have time to move Jeanette back into the truck, her pod too heavy to move and because of the slope of the ramp, it might fall on him if he tries to move it up. Worse, he might hurt Jeanette inside it.

Simon remembers having a single ancient canopy that designed to protect against rain or sunlight in the truck.

Considering the situation, he could use it to protect Jeanette himself. It's very rare for a storm to pass by these times, mostly in dry heat or cold. Simon has forgotten what it felt like for rain to pour on his skin and he never bathed as much as he could remembered, not enough clean water to do so if there were any. The rain could be good since being out in the heat all day and felt like he could use a small bathing in the rain…

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Later that night, Simon's sleep-deprived eyes shot wide open in total shock as another lightning bolt stuck and missed him by a few meters, frying the ground it touched. The ungodly sound of electricity crashing down is painfully deafening to his ears. It's the tenth time in the night he was almost electrocuted, but he kept his spot next to Jeanette's pod, holding an umbrella over it as he stood in the downpour.

The rain came down hard in every direction carried by the wind. Simon doesn't mind shivering in the frozen rain, being drenched right through his attire from head to toe. Although he regrets underestimating the terrible conditions of the storm, he'd given his other arm for some heat. The temperature dropped rapidly and had only then realized he had to stay awake and hold an umbrella over Jeanette's pod until the rain stopped, his arms outstretched for holding it all night. Simon didn't know how to find a way to get it back into the truck or to a safer place.

All he knows is that it will be dawn in a couple of hours and the storm will be gone by then.

Just as he finished that though, Simon screamed and jumped in surprise as the eleventh near-miss lightning bolt struck the streetlight next to him.

_IF we make it to dawn,_ thought Simon as he looked in terror at the molten metal of the struck light post.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

The rain had passed but the cold has not a few hours later.

A dark overcast hung over Sector _NA-001_, preventing sunlight from warming the surface that morning, it's now below freezing.

_Why of all times of the year for weather on this planet to go from extreme to extreme?_ Simon wondered to himself, shivering in the freezing air.

Since the Earth's protective atmosphere long been chemically tainted and eaten away, the climates became volatile to temperature changes from very hot to very cold if there was sunlight or not over non-clouded or darkened regions of Earth.

It's getting way too cold now, Simon's teeth sore from uncontrollable shivering, suit wet from the downpour but he has no other forms of clothing to change into or dry off in. Standing out in the windy open air, the wet clothing stung his skin like needles, adding more misery on top of sleep deprivation, shell shock and a common cold he got in the storm. He was thankfully astonished he made it through thirty-three lightning bolts that came within a few feet of him, almost frying him on the spot and he hasn't succumbed to hypothermia from freezing rain.

Simon looks at the source of his misery and endurance, the hibernating form of Jeanette. She was all right, far as he could tell. No water droplets or electric bolts have touched her pod. He stood by her side all night, with an umbrella in his biologic hand because of the lightning. Besides the annotation of his mechanical arm is a huge metallic attraction for electricity, Simon wonders why he hasn't succumbed to exhaustion from keeping his prosthetic arm holding the umbrella for hours.

Her pod hadn't changed since going into slumber, no more or less frozen.

_But must be kept safe regardless, _he thought to himself_._

He went back into the truck and came back out with his blanket.

Sure Jeanette is cryogenically frozen but Simon couldn't be sure. Her pod hollow and not very thick, she probably felt what happened outside hence cryogenic pod preserves her from aging, not from external harm.

Simon drapes the blanket around her pod, shielding her from the dropping temperature, imagining what it would be like to embrace her if she wasn't frozen, to shield her from the cold and feel the warm of her presence in his arms, protecting and letting Jeanette know how much he really cares for her.

Oh did he want her so bad.

He finishes tying up the blanket ends, satisfied he is willing to look after her well-being. The rush of the wind against his damp attire reminded him of his own, shivering again. He doesn't have anything else to spare to keep himself warm but even if he did, he would be more than content to give it to Jeanette.

She was safe and it was all that mattered to him.

He stares at Jeanette as he sits in front of her pod, curled up on the ground, holding his firmly woven cotton of his hammock around his torso with his arms trying not to freeze. He imagined Jeanette holding him and not himself to stay warm. He will stay there until she wakes up, no matter how long it took until then. Simon turns to his only sources of warmth: his bundled up hammock wrapped around his body facing away from the wind and Jeanette in his thoughts.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

The winds kicked up the following day, a sandstorm coming by nightfall. Simon anticipated a storm would happen but won't be able to move Jeanette's pod in time, thus having to find a way to protect her and survive from a storm out in the open.

All he could do was cover her pod with anything to protect her from the sand. She still had his blanket so he added a trashcan over the top, container boxes concealed the sides and he weighed everything down to be sure she was anchored. He just used the fabric of his hammock to cover himself up since he can't fit in the shelter he made for her.

He stayed out there to be sure she wasn't blown away or hit by flying debris.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Seventeen hours of watching through the darkened clouds of sand and powerful gusts later, the sandstorm ended.

Sand covered the bridge and the winds seemed to blow hard still but the dust has settled.

Something stirs in one of the dunes of sand. Simon digs himself out, getting much sand out of his hair and off his suit, completely unfazed by the idea of surviving premature burial as he has done for hundreds of times, unlike his fellow workers. Simon immediately checks up on the most important thing.

He digs out the trash can/boxed up cocoon out of the sand and there she was, right where he left her from the storm. Simon seems satisfied when no sand seeped into the pod. Despite having sand in his mouth, hair, and attire, Jeanette is still safe.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Two days later, Simon still anticipates for Jeanette to wake, however his patience being put to the test. After putting much thought in it, Simon came up with another way to help Jeanette wake up by trying to unfreeze her. Remembering she froze when the pod encased her, he will have to reverse what it did by deactivating the pod. Though he knew absolutely nothing about the inner workings of a cryogenic pod, he is willing to give it his best shot. He examines Jeanette's pod for any access point.

The surface a flawless transparent metallic cylinder with no power source, internal lines, systems, or controls, the pod just a symmetrically designed tube. Simon had to admit it's very interesting technology, save for he mentally cursed it for keeping him from Jeanette.

All there is to access the pod is the pulsating beacon, the outlines of an opening can be seen.

_Hmm, it'll have to do, _Simon thinks to himself as he grabs a crowbar and pries it open.

Inside is a battery cell, a circular disc with a green light flashing on and off for the beacon, frosted dry ice lines linked with it.

_This must be the pod's cryogenic supply keeping her frozen in place._ He pulls out his pacemaker's charge cable from his belt.

_My best chance would be to short-circuit the pod. _He links the cable to his artificial pacemaker.

_Its alternator unit should provide enough charge to deactivate the device_ . . . She contemplates her thoughts for a moment before continuing, thinking of finally getting to awaken Jeanette.

He thinks what to say to her, how she will react. Will she chew him out for awakening her? Will she kill him? On the other hand, will she embrace him for saving her from becoming frozen for no reason? The last thought caught his attention, maybe she was unintentionally frozen and unfreezing her seemed like having being so grateful and she will thank him with hugs and kisses, happily ever after. That warmed Simon's mind, giving him the motivation to go ahead and see what happens.

ZAP!

Simon is instantaneously confused on the ground a yard away, his entire body especially his chest jerked, stinging like hell and smelled of smoke.

_What the hell just happened?_

He looked up, his questions answered along with his idea and fantasies backfiring. The pod's automated defenses knocked Simon off his feet by electrocuting him. A hundred volts being too much to overpower his pacemaker, it's a wonder it wasn't fried, otherwise his heart wouldn't beat properly and die of both cardiac arrest and electric shock.

_Let's not do that again._ He sighs in relief, slightly disappointed.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Later that afternoon, the sounds of creaking wheels filled the streets of the polluted city as a figure tugs on a cylindrical object.

Simon pulls Jeanette's pod, standing vertically on an ancient red wagon wrapped up in Christmas lights, all shining but not plugged into any power source.

Simon decided on one last way of somehow getting Jeanette or her pod to let her awake by persuasion. After some serious thinking, while remembering scenes from Hello Dolly, Simon learned the man takes the woman on a special social engagement, which involved taking the woman out to certain places in the city when he wishes to convey his romantic emotions to the woman.

_What are those called again?_ he wondered_. _

_A deep? Dent? Dat? D-Date? Yeah that's it, a date!_ He decided to take Jeanette out on a date to wake her up and let her know how he feels about her! It'll be a challenge since she's still in her pod but he's too determined.

Simon managed on sliding her pod onto a wagon from a ramp he made after taking a while figuring out how to pull it off. After an hour or two of laboring, she was on the wagon, the wagon buckling while trying to support the pod's weight.

Simon also remembered it being customary for the couple to express how they felt around each other by certain things they held important or at least to one of them. He draped some Christmas lights over her pod, shining as soon as they touched. He wished to show her she brought light to long dead objects like the light bulb she lit up. All the colors imaginable on her beautiful form best fitted on how he wanted to express her in his mind.

He went about treating Jeanette for a date, following the way the movie showed him, almost exactly to the lines the man used and the activities they done.

From a nice brisk walk down the streets to rowing down the sludge river after laboring her pod into a raft, to an improvised fancy dinner with a picnic blanket he found, draped atop a crate with the lighters used for candles. He even had his canned survival food prepped from his truck, worried she might starve in her pod so he kept offering most of his survival provisions to her, setting canned food and water in front of her, probably to draw her out of hunger. However that effort also failed, though she can't eat when she's frozen and perfectly preserved, he just goes along with it, eating sparingly and speaking politely, awaiting eagerly for her to wake up any second.

After a rather one-sided and uneventful dinner, Simon carries Jeanette to the final place for the date. If he remembered correctly, it was also the most crucial and romantic to any male-female outing: the sunset.

Simon finished engraving SIMON+JEANETTE onto the side of a trashcan with his laser, he and the frozen Jeanette sat side by side on a secluded bench overlooking the dried up valley of the Hudson Bay. Through the polluted atmosphere, it's a beautiful sunset created by the chemicals in the air altering the color spectrum of light in the sky. Rays of purple, crimson red and orange shining through clouds and smog on the horizon bathed Simon and Jeanette in a warm and intimate light.

"Aw," Simon coos at the sight of

Throughout the years, he's never seen the sunset in this whole new light before. He regarded it as an indication of the end of a workday, a relaxing reminder but knowing it'll be the same thing the next day, another day of meaningless labor. Now, with Jeanette in his life, and learning about love, the sunset reflected everything he longed forever since he watched '_It Only Takes A Moment_.' Something very safe, precious, everything he could want or need and giving him light for the events of his life to him in order for her to exist and for him to meet her, maybe, if possibly, sharing a future with her.

He looks to Jeanette on his left, the most wonderful source of warmth and love in the universe, more than he ever dreamed of right next to him but felt unreachable all because of the cursed cryogenic abomination encasing her from him.

Placing his left hand on the pod, over where her right hand is. It was the closest he'd get to hold her hand, that magical gesture could instantly fill the void of his lonely heart. It could tell each other everything they needed to know about love, a simple way for him to feel where his life belonged. He looks into the closed eyes of Jeanette. Silently begging her at least let him know that she can hear what he wants to tell her so badly.

"I love you." Though frozen, he breathlessly pours his heart out to her stasis form, his puppy dog eyes reflecting the longing he felt.

_If only she were awake…_

A dreadful stinging sensation in his left hand snaps Simon out of his thoughts when he learned he can't pull his hand off her pod.

"AAAAHHG!" he screams as razor-sharp pain stings his palm.

"Crap! Forgot to put on my gloves-" He tries pulling harder, his bare skin was frozen to the surface of -100˚C cryogenic frost.

"-whenever moving the pod around!" His hand hurt and stung even more, stuck to the frost on the pod's surface.

"Ah!" He gives a hard tug, still nothing but pain.

He gives it one harder tug. Some of his hand's skin peels off as his hand comes free.

Tears formed in his eyes at the appalling pain and Simon drops to the ground, clasping his hand. He nearly loses his dinner at the sight of bloody tissue layer in his hand and the bloody handprint of skin on Jeanette's pod.

He misses the sun disappearing below the horizon as he passed out.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Nighttime has fallen later that evening on the sector. A very peaceful one too with light winds, and a cool air outside as soothing a polluted place could ever get.

Outside of Simon's truck, he has set up the old TV screen and Jeanette's pod so they could enjoy the night and the rest of their "date." He's playing a match of Pong on the TV, the broken down game console still workable. The score: Simon=8000 and Jeanette=0. Though frozen, he placed another controller in front of Jeanette to make it seem she was at least there, just not participating in the match. Simon flows with it, only anticipating her revival.

His mind nags him about getting back to work tomorrow and it's getting late for a strange reason, but it's a routine that's imprinted into him . . . _must complete your directive._

He won't give up on Jeanette, for he can still…

Simon tries thinking of another alternative to get her out but he has done everything from waiting, jumpstarting, short-circuiting and courtship, only to realize the date was the best idea. He ran fresh out of ideas.

Nothing worked but like in Hello Dolly, the characters always brought out their emotions on a date. He reassured himself the film was the universal method of how dates turn out guaranteed. He thinks about the evening, how things went, following every scene to the way the date goes and on his part, was exactly what happened in the movie, he thought, it should work. Right?

He glances over to Jeanette one last time to see if any of his outing's efforts worked.

Nothing just her beacon humming.

He slumps to the ground, sighing in defeat, finally giving up.

"All for nothing..." he said to himself, almost on the brink of tears.

As a rare, peaceful night like this on Earth, the dark and calm chill reflected hopelessness of getting a response from her. Nothing happened and he felt it was the worst night of his life, feeling that lonely feeling again all through the night.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

The next morning, Simon decided since there is no need to waste any more effort to wake Jeanette up, he will return to his original duties of garbage collecting. If he can't awaken her, the only choice would be to wait but that could be a very, very long time. There isn't much else to do but pass the time with a routine until then.

He finishes packing his usual things as he heads off to work, not before taking one last look at Jeanette, still mentally clinging to a fading light she will somehow be there to greet him the moment she's in his sight.

Same as always, out on the ramp near the truck, still frozen solid, nothing else. She isn't going anywhere or doing anything.

It shattered whatever hopes Simon had left in him as he slowly continues to work with Pooka close behind, defeated. A look of pure gloom on Simon's face, his eyes blood-shot pink/red from a week without sleep, energy drained from exhaustion and lastly, his tears.

* * *

Something I wish to point out about the title of this particular chapter . . . it's a song by _**B.J. Thomas**_ that _**Andrew Stanton **_wanted to be the track for when WALL**·** E takes care of EVE. _**Thomas Newman**_ instead wanted to make something more original instead.

I also wouldn't mind having a little more reviews.


	11. IT'S ADVENTURE TIME!

Hmm . . . one review . . . really? I kinda expected some more . . . Seriously, I kinda expected at least five or possibly over . . . If I'm getting a lot of 'hits" on my story, I wouldn't mind having more reviews and hear what you people think . . .

Anyways, since I have one FINAL down and one more to go along with doing a pointless placement test for college, I'll be free for summer! WOOHOO! Which means I'll be able to look over my other story "SHADES OF GRAY" and figure out what to do with it. Oddly enough, I already have a climatic battle in mind, yet I'm FAR from it . . .

I have a little game for anybody who's interested: A hint of when Alvin, Theodore, Brittany and Eleanor will appear together is after we meet my vary own ambiguous named character Lucien Sgro in two chapters (guess which rodent I'm making him and no, he's not going to be a chipmunk) who I picked to play M∙O. Charlene will appear seven chapters after the aforementioned Chipmunks and Chipettes make their first appearance. Happy guessing!

So looking this story over, should I have made Jeanette the titular character WALL•E and Simon EVE? It seems to fit their personalities perfectly with Jeanette being shy like WALL•E and Simon . . . well he has gone through character development from an intelligent yet flat out character that showed no emotions whatsoever, following Alvin regardless what the impulsive chipmunk did in The Alvin Show to still intelligent but possessing a very dry sense of humor as well as a keen wit rounded character in Alvin and the Chipmunks as well as in the movies, much like the character development for EVE is she learns to embrace her "defects" by the end of the film while she had sentience at the beginning, she was forced to keep it hidden because of her directive. Her voice also evolves into something more feminine and emotional when it was originally robotic and distant.

Oh! Before I forget, this will be the last appearance of _Pooka_ but prepare for more crossovers! And once again, I would like to thank **trex841** for giving me the link to Television programs featuring anthropomorphic characters!

**trex841:** Guessing you're a fan of that show on **_Cartoon_** _**Network**_? Frankly, I'm too scared to ask what it's about 0.0

**DISCLAIMER**

First founded as **_Bagdasarian Film Corporation_** by chipmunks creator **_Ross Bagdasarian Sr._**, **_Ross Bagdassarian Jr. _**and**_ Janice Karman_** holds rights to Alvin and the Chipmunks, first cartoon called The Alvin Show, under **_Bagdasarian Productions_**.

The character _Pooka_ is a fictional dog in the 1997 American animated film Anastasia, produced and directed by _**Don Bluth **_and _**Gary Goldman **_at**_ Fox Animation Studios_**.

* * *

Simon's movements are slow that day. Normally shoveling and compact several cubes in just a minute, Simon's depression makes minutes seem hours as he finishes his first trash cube in ten minutes of lazy scooping. He stops, feeling there is no energy or spirit within him to carry out his duties. Even Pooka sensed his master's unrest.

Simon pulls out one of his Zippo lighters from his front pocket and flicks it on just how Jeanette showed him.

Simon stares at the tiny flame, thinking about her as memories of that evening ran through his mind, the only time he interacted with another anthropomorphic being, a lovely chipette no less. The mere ten minutes he spent with her were the most eventful and happiest in his life compared to nearly two decades of his life of surviving on Earth, he felt truly alive.

He remembers seeing her face, an image of a chipette that could strike so much affection into him to make him feel immeasurable love for her. He remembers her emerald eyes looking at him when speaking for the first time, something he thought he would never get or need to do. He remembers how her warmth felt up close, the finer details of her soft skin made him ache to hold her or at least feel her touch, but as close as he got, it felt like a world apart.

He remembered her laugh, sounding sweeter than the soft tune of "_It Only Takes A Moment_" and he _loved_ making her laugh as much as he _loved_ Jeanette herself. Then he thought of the moment he tried holding her hand, how he came so close to feeling the warmth of his love run through her and from her to him.

Simon cowered away at the last second, just because he feared Jeanette didn't feel the same to him and would mean certain death if he dared try.

He thinks of the way she is now: cold, lifeless, and unresponsive . . . maybe completely lost.

_What if she never wakes up?_

The question resounds in his mind. In realization, Simon feels more alone than ever, even though she was there physically, feeling he left without the world, without life, without a reason for a life and without her…

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

An earthquake resounds through the city, snapping Simon back into reality. He can't figure out what's happening until he notices the accelerating wind blew the lighter's flame out. He knew something was out of place. Earthquakes don't cause such strong winds.

A familiar roaring sound echoes from somewhere.

_A building collapsing? Is that what causing all this? _he wonders.

Pooka barks at the light emerging from the sky. Simon sees it's originating in the same direction of his home, and up in the sky, spotting the light of rocket engines. Jeanette 's ship has returned.

His mind immediately alerted of what that meant.

"NO!" he shoots to his feet.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Simon has never ran fast in his life, even faster when something involves his own safety such as sandstorms, falling towers, floods, or any emergency endangering his life. No, he ran because _she_ was in trouble, almost forgetting Pooka who struggled to keep up. Simon's insides ache from sprinting through few kilometers through a maze of trash dunes and toward home but he forces himself to go on, he must get to her.

His worst fears confirmed as the giant reconnaissance ship Jeanette arrived in lands next to the bridge of his home. He's almost there but the rocket's side opened up a cargo bay, facing his truck and Jeanette is still out there.

"NETTA!"

A twinge of fear came over him as he sees a robotic arm reach out and grabs Jeanette's cryogenic and retracts into the cargo bay. She is leaving, no, being taken away from him.

"NETTA!" he screamed, almost out of breath from running so fast.

Simon will not sit back and lose her forever. He'll be damned if she leaves, being left behind to rot for the rest of his life here. No! She get to her, tell her he loves her and wants to spend a lifetime with her, even if it takes forever to free her or if it takes his own life, he will spend at least another second with her.

Simon eventually figured he knew what to do.

When Pooka caught up to him, only does Simon realize Pooka was with him.

"Whoa!" He stops Pooka in his tracks, shooing him up the ramp of the truck.

"Stay!" he forcefully tells Pooka. The mutt seems to understand as he sits down.

The sound of the ship's engines firing up snaps Simon into a panicked sprint, paying no mind to what he has on him or what he's leaving behind but Jeanette's ship will launch any minute.

He sprints after Jeanette, almost running over the edge of the bridge when he tries grabbing onto Jeanette's pod, which the robotic arm retracted into the ship. Simon realizes there is only one way to get on. He's gonna have to jump a hundred meter drop to the dried up Hudson River to certain death to get in the ship.

The cargo bay doors begins closing, Simon mentally and physically raced against tremendous odds.

Simon has no time to contemplate! He runs to the other edge, boosts boosts his speed with all his energy as he dashes like a maniac and jumps with all his might…

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

…he barely makes it! A twenty-foot leap of faith, Simon lands in the cargo hold as the bay doors seal shut behind him, the locks clicking in place with a hiss sound, the ship pressurized for blast off.

Simon twisted his ankle as he hit the deck hard. He winces at the pain but pushes it to the back of his mind as he tries to find Jeanette.

"NETTA!" he cries out to her.

Simon clamps onto a ladder as he tries steadily climbing to the higher decks, getting to where Jeanette 's pod is stored.

The ship trembles and a deafening roar echoes in Simon's ears as the rocket boosters ignited.

Simon clings tightly to the support ladder for dear life as the ship lifts off.

"Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh….."

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Back on the ground, Pooka watches the reconnaissance ship blast off, hearing his master scream almost as loud as the rocket engines, even as both fade, leaving the atmosphere.


	12. Intersteller Travels

Yes, it is true that the legendary episode "Sploosh," along with "Legend of Sleeping Brittany," "Dr. Simon and Mr. Heartthrob," "Back to Our Future," "Quarterback in Curlers" and all of the other episodes that the person with the username **ChipmunkAdventure1** under **_youtube_** had all been deleted due to copyright claim courtesy of _**Bagdasarian Productions**_ . . . It seems that they're taking ANY Chipmunks episodes that are uploaded on _**youtube**_ . . . =(

**StrawberryTigress**: Not anymore . . .

**Devastator1775**: Yes, this has seven hundred, forty eight more hits than SIM·N! :D

**WALL-E and EVE In Love: **Please refer back to my previous response . . .

**drkseeker233:** No problem! Sure hoped that helped!

**annabellecandy:** Welcome to fanfiction! And thank you for enjoying this! Please check out my other stories and review if you wish.

**DISCLAIMER**

_**Bagdasarian Productions**_ owns and holds the rights to both _The Chipmunks_ and_ The Chipettes_.

**_Bagdasarian Film_ Corporations** owned and held the right to The Alvin Show.

_Alvin _is the rollercoaster troublemaker of his two brothers throughout the series and movies.

_Simon_ is the intellectual member of his two brothers throughout the series and movies_._

_Theodore_ is the gluttonous, innocent member of his two brothers throughout the series and movies.

_Ixix Naugus_ is a fictional famed sorcerer appearing in the Sonic the Hedgehog series or SatAM by fans as well as a recurring character in Sonic the Hedgehog comics published by **_Archie Comics_**.

_Kermit the Frog_ is a muppet created by _**James Maury "Jim" Henson**_.

* * *

The monorail passes through another tunnel under a holographic-sign: MAIN DECK–TO–LIDO DECK.

The deck a massive artificial paradise with hundreds of floors of beach house styled living quarters in a ring surrounding a vast circular swimming pool with adjacent spas and holographic palm trees all around it. There are hundreds of other passengers here, none in the water. All of them sat by the poolside, under umbrellas with their food-drink cups, still hypnotized to their holographic-screen chairs. Three black buttoned nose, light peach fur male chipmunks were adjusting an umbrella for one of the hypnotized humans. Back towards Jeanette, the shortest chipmunk in a red knee length long sleeved turtleneck top matching his hat stood four feet five inches. Four inches taller, the tallest of the chipmunks wore a steel blue sweater and a black pair of round framed glasses shielding his black, beady eyes. Standing two inches shorter than the bespectacled chipmunk, a chubby chipmunk was clad in a jade green sweater.

_Figures,_ Jeanette wondered if everyone must be that lazy or brain dead.

The monorail comes to a stop in the front of the LIDO DECK where there's a large Buy n' Large logo on the floor, and an entrance to the BRIDGE LOBBY. Jeanette looks up from the entrance to see a towering spire. At the top was a windowed observation deck built into the ceiling, it must be where they're going.

Simon's tram got off towards the entrance with Jeanette staying out of Chief Ixis's sight, wondering what's going to be up there.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Meanwhile, Mary and the other passengers leave the monorail. The other passengers go about their business on their path lines with Mary taking in her surroundings. She moves about freely, fascinated at everything she sees of the massive ship.

She gasps as she oversees the LIDO DECK.

"I didn't know we had a pool!"

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Simon's tram enters a vast hall, in the base of the control center spire. It's mostly empty, except for a single receptionist desk in front of the elevator to the BRIDGE guarded by an impenetrable blue force field with holographic letters scrolled over it reading BRIDGE ACCESS- AUTHORIZED PERSONNELS ONLY.

The tram stops in front of the desk. Remaining hidden, Jeanette risks a look over the pod to see why they have stopped.

At the desk sat a green frog with bulging eyes in a white Buy n' Large Navy uniform typing on a translucent keyboard onto his holographic screen, his fingers moving at impossible speed, filling out entire reports in just seconds.

The male amphibian seemed lost in his virtual screen before him, eyes seemed bogged down and sleep deprived if doing this task for a long time as Chief Ixis coughs to get his attention.

"Excuse me." Ixis gets a little impatient.

He unglues his sight from his screen, finally stopped typing when he realizes who was addressing her.

"Oh! My apologies Master Chief Ixis, sir! What can I do for you, sir?" he salutes him. Ixis gets straight to it.

"I need to get to the BRIDGE, it's urgent."

The typist looks at the pod questioningly.

"May I ask why, sir?" he asks kindly while still at attention.

"That's classified. I'm under orders from Commander Cass to report to him immediately."

"I understand, sir, but I am required to ask for authoriza-"

"I said I was ordered to report to the BRIDGE by the first officer immediately, and that means now!" Ixis orders him to let him pass, the typist doing his job but this is far more important.

"Yes sir," the typist punches in a command and the security field guarding the elevator deactivates. Ixis drives the tram right past him and into the elevator.

Just about to return to his original duty, the typist notices someone clinging to the back of the tram.

"Huh?" he looks at the spectacled dirty chipette puzzled, never seeing anybody like her before.

"Hello," Jeanette says quietly, giving him a friendly wave. He didn't seem like much of someone to be afraid of besides Ixis.

The typist is baffled, unsure of how to respond to this unfamiliar chipette. Before he could, the elevator doors close as it rises toward the BRIDGE.

"Interesting," he says to himself.

_Out of the ordinary indeed,_ _but far better than being ordered at by the chief_, he thought.

* * *

Guess which looney scientist and his assistant are making their appearance in the next chapter?


	13. STOWAWAY On board

**trex841:** Thank you!

**rfollman:** Haha, thanks! I hope I got the space scenario as accurately as possible.

**Continuum Regained:** I'm glad you like the descriptions!

**Santana9:** Thanks! I try my best!

**DISCLAIMER**

_The Chipmunks _rightfully belongs to **_Ross Bagdasarian Sr._** and **_Ross Bagdasarian Jr._** as well as **_Janice Karman_**.

_The Chipettes _rightfully belongs to **_Ross Bagdasarian Jr._** and **_Janice Karman_**.

_Lucas Sgro_ is an ambiguous name created and owned by **_Spring-Heel-Jacqueline_**.

_Slinkman_ is a fictional character of Emmy-Award winning American animated television series Camp Lazlo created by _Joe Murray_ that aired on _Cartoon Network_.

_Rabbit _is a fictional character in the _Walt Disney Company franchise_ Winnie the Pooh based on the book by _A. A. Milne_.

_Woody Woodpecker _is the titular character of Woody Woodpecker who appeared in theatrical short films produced by the **_Walter Lantz animation studios _**and distributed by **_Universal Pictures_**.

_Rancid Rabbit_ is a fictional character in the American animated television series CatDog created for **_Nickelodeon_** by **_Peter Hannan_**.

_Mr. Whiskers_ is one of the titular characters of an American animated television series originally aired from August 2004 to August 2005 called Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, televised in the United States by **_Toon Disney_** as well as **_Disney Channel _**in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

* * *

There's something hidden within the purple nebula. Whatever it is, it's big.

_A planet?_ No, it's not spherical.

_A planetoid? An asteroid?_ Simon speculates, trying to make out its shape, looking strangely familiar.

As the _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_ clears through the purple gases clouds, Simon can see it clearly, he gasps when he realizes it is an enormous starship.

Five kilometers long from bow tip to aft tip, and its superstructure from the keel to it's spire must be at least seven kilometers high. It's primarily designed like Earth's ancient oceanic cruise liners, a fat hull with thousands, maybe millions of viewports, a streamlined superstructure and communications tower and traditional designed bow and stern. It had another superstructure to it, a sort of engineering spire running down the keel, giving the vessel a look of a space station. Two massive Ion Drive engines were on each side with propulsive motors a hundred times bigger than the _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_. The _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_ approached the bow's starboard side bearing the unmistakable red circle along with the white and blue lettering of the Buy N' Large logo. It's a Buy N' Large star liner, but not just any, it must be a flagship, the largest of the fleet.

Simon notices the christened name above the logo and confirms its familiarity.

"Buy n' Large's_ AXIOM SL-AX-1001_."

It's the very same ship seen from those holographic ads back on Earth. The largest moving object ever constructed by human hands. Simon never believed it actually existed or would ever see it to be real and here it proudly was.

The _Axiom_ filled the view of the cockpit's window as the _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_ is about a kilometer away. Simon stares almost straight up at it.

The recon ship slows down as it lines up next to the _Axiom_.

"Whoa," Simon steps back believing they were going to hit, feeling a bit worried standing next to that goliath.

The side of the _Axiom's_ fifty by a hundred meter doors that's big enough for the _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_ to fit, slides open.

Two, smaller unmanned tug ships emerge from the opened bay and pass around the _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_.

The smaller ships made way for the _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_ as they each emitted blue tractor beams of light on the ship, guiding the autopilot craft in.

Simon stays frozen in place, floating in zero gravity, clasping the chair making sure not to do anything erroneous.

The doors closed with a hiss of air as the docking bay depressurizes.

The _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_ encounters locking clamps, the ship braces into place with a satisfying clink. The tug rockets disengage the tractor beam, the recon ship slides down a tad, as its weight is supported.

Simon feels artificial gravity kick in as he falls to the cockpit deck floor, hard.

"Ow."

Simon tries to stand but keeps falling over, feeling no strength in him to support his own weight, it almost hurts to try.

_How can I forget? Being in zero gravity for a prolonged time weakens the bones and muscles_,Simon grunted.

_If I keep moving around, my strength should return . . . eventually . . ._

He clasps onto the side viewport, trying to pull himself up to relay his new surroundings. The inside of the docking bay was unlike anything Simon has ever seen. It was all clean, brightly lit, sterile, advanced, well maintained and robotics everywhere, an opposite environment from where he came from. He notices no crew present at all everything here was unmanned. The only thing not a robot he has seen yet was Jeanette and the other anthropomorphic beings. He wonders if this entire ship could be her home.

The deck suddenly bustles with mechanical activity. Robotic arms, robotic devices, robotic equipment, robotic everything tended to the recon ship in all directions like an automated facility show, refueling its engines, running diagnostics on its systems, unloading cargo, repairing its—

Wait! One of the things unloading was Jeanette's pod, along with the other frozen E.V.R.E. scouts.

"Netta!" Simon tries gathering his slowly returning strength to get to her. He crawls and clasps his way to the open hatch. Simon manages to get enough strength to stand.

A noise startles him. He notices sounds and movement coming from out of the deck next to Jeanette's pod, placed along with the other pods.

He hides behind one of the cryogenic pods, listening closely to the sounds and movement. An elevator emerges from the deck, and there stood anthropomorphic beings.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

A squad of four anthropomorphic post-recon cleaners dressed in white and blue uniforms and carried sterilizing equipment.

One of them, a short teenage silky gray squirrel with a bushy curled tail, wearing a newspaper carrier cap that had a red siren light on top and a darkened transparent Head's Up Display over his soft golden brown eyes stepped out. He wore a white jumpsuit with his name 'LUCIEN' imprinted on his nametag and equipped with high-tech microbe obliteration scrubber and a container with lots of sterilization fluid strapped to his back. He wore heavy duty cleaning gloves and boots much like Simon's but rubber and far cleaner. About a head or two shorter than the rest of the crew, not to mention younger, but judging from his serious pose, he must have been the head in charge of them. He tries to line up the other three behind him. They seem to be having a hard time trying to pay attention.

"Alright, follow me. Whoa, whoa! WHOA! Stop!" he steps off the elevator but tries to stay in sync with an awaiting lighted path at their feet.

"Lucien! Come on! It's just a stinkin' guide path. Let's just get the job done!" The aureolin yellow banana slug with a vacuuming device protests to Lucien's strict routine.

"Yeah, stop being such an O.C.!" The cream, white chest and tail furred, pink nose rabbit cleaner shouts.

"Shut up! We don't move unless our path is cleared to go!" Lucien shouts back to them.

Sure enough, the directed path to Jeanette's pod pinged on.

"Alright, let's go!" Lucien clears them to make their way over to Jeanette's lowered pod.

"Neat freak, ha ha ha HA ha!" the cardinal red woodpecker vacuum cleaner says under his breath, but that didn't go unheard by Lucien.

He hated being joked about his cleanliness and pathological fear of contamination and germs.

"I heard that! It's not funny!" Lucien says defensively as the other three laugh, hating being joked about his cleanliness and pathological fear of contamination and germs.

Lucien shouldn't let the fact of her subordinates and fellow crew ridiculing him from his age, to his height and most of all, his Obsessive Compulsive behavior bother him. She had to say focued and look professional, in order to compensate for the the name-calling.

Being the youngest certified crewmember on the _Axiom_, personally charged with the maintenance and sterilization of the _Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle_ and all of its imports and exports. Pretty much the overseer of the docking operations, he took pride in his job well, maybe too well, always scrubbing and cleansing every microbe off all the cargo that went in and out of the ship as well as always following textbook procedures and protocol, even for the simplest of tasks.

In addition, that's exactly what Lucien intends to do, stick to the standard operating procedure and ensuring cleanliness of this ship! He congregates his thoughts standing prepared and ignoring the other crewmembers rolling their eyes.

Lucien activates his Heads-Up Display and begins scanning Jeanette's pod, looking for anything that changed on the pod and its occupants during their missions. He noticed the glowing pulse of Jeanette's beacon, something he never seen before. Nevertheless, it doesn't concern him, it'll be squawked by maintenance soon when they arrive.

He switches his vision over to electron micro-scan, Jeanette's pod lights up in some places as bacterial traces of soil particulates detected, dust a form of atmospheric/domestic aerosol that can become a deadly respiratory disease carrier onboard a sterilized spaceship. His vision evaluates and reads aloud:

"_SIXTEEN PERCENT FOREIGN CONTAMINATION._"

"Oh!" Taking out his scrubber, Lucien scrubs in professional strokes across the surface of Jeanette's pod in disgust.

The E.V.R.E. Scouts were among the messiest of shipments, returning from their top-secret destinations unwittingly bringing back god-knows-what from whatever world they explored.

He finishes his last minute scrub as the others get to work on sterilizing, buffering, polishing, finishing the pod and moving on to the next one.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Simon watches from behind the cryogenic pods, still trying to figure out what to do. His strength returned quite a bit so he could move and sneak around. Save for the cryogenic pods, there isn't much to hide behind. He looks at the cryogenic pod, an empty one. Then he shifts his attention over to the cleaners, studying their routine.

"Hmm," An idea brews in his head.

He opens the vacant pod, lies down and closing it without making a sound. As the robotic arm retrieves his pod, Simon braces himself for whatever is to come.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Lucien finishes off the second pod and turns his attention to the next lowered one as the others finish up.

Lucien activates his HUD.

"Huh? What's this?" This pod's registered empty but it's been opened and tampered with recently and there's something, or someone, inside it.

`He notices new handprints on the side and movement inside. Someone IS inside the pod.

Lucien opens the pod.

"What the?"

Simon freezes.

Lucien stares at Simon, never seeing this kind of person before.

"Who are-" Before Lucien asks who the stranger is, he finally notices Simon's weathered attire. Confused, he activates his micro-scan.

It almost blinds Lucien when all of Simon's registered dust, dirt, crud, grime, oil, grease, sand and bodily sweat altogether.

"_OVER ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FOREIGN CONTAMINATION!_" his scanner screamed off the charts but Lucien screamed even louder as he jumped up awestruck and horrified at the presence of such filth and uncleanness, his siren lighting up.

"Oh my god! What the hell is this? No, no, no, so wrong! So dirty! Very, very dirty!" Lucien goes haywire. Simon shrinks down in confusion and fear.

"Must clean immediately! Eradicate any and all foreign contamination!"

Lucien pulls out his scrubber, ready to furiously wash down Simon with all his skill and might.

"Ah! G-Get away from me!" Simon dodges, missing Lucien's scrubber.

"Agh! Get off of me!" Simon cries out.

"Huh? Stand still, I must clean!" Lucien reaches out to Simon, trying to scrub his face.

"Aaaagh! I said I have to CLEAN you!" Lucien groans in frustration, watching Simon fall out of the pod and pushing Lucien clear off him.

"AAAGH! STOP MAKING SUCH A MESS!" Lucien shrieks in anger as this horrifying filthiness worsens.

"Lucien? What is going on?" The other three cleaners stare at Simon and Lucien, amused by the sight of their neurotic colleague losing his mind.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

At the far end of the bay, a hatch opens and figures come marching into the docking bay.

Two of them were strong, identical looking guards, the SwatBots of the ship. They wore dark, neatly pressed servant uniforms and carried police officer equipment with energy binder handcuffs, tractor beam pens, electroshock batons, taser guns and siren equipped peaked caps.

The third is a short, sickly yellow-green furred rabbit with a bulbous light pink nose and, minus the lengthened ears, stood about Lucien's height. A distinguishable red bowtie on his shirt and shoulder sleeves on his Buy n' Large Navy uniform bore the enlisted stripes of Command Master Chief Petty Officer, the chief of the boat and head of security along with service nametag reading "MCPO WILLIAM RANCID."

They marched into the direction of the commotion at the cleaner station, the looks on their faces meant directive.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

The commotion is the heavy laughter of the cleaning crew watching Lucien having a hard time trying to keep up with cleaning Simon's every movement on the deck, tracking the hundred fold layers of germs on Simon's entire body, dust mites drifting in the air and falling to the ground.

Lucien finishes Simon's last footprint with great speed.

"Alright you! Time for me to-"

Simon takes another step back, out of fear and amusement at the neurotic little male squirrel.

"Oh COME ON!" Lucien scrubs with compulsive precession and speed. Simon is fascinated that he isn't the only quirk in the universe.

"Look! Everything needs to stay clean! UNDERSTAND?"

Lucien tries to leap for the chipmunk but Simon, having learned of Lucien's little weakness, slaps a handful into Lucien's face, trying to shoe him off.

"Hey-" When Lucien finally processes Simon just slapped dirt into his face, his mysophopia kicks in.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Losing it, Lucien scrubs his face with full force and speed in panic.

Simon chuckles in relief, then notices the rest of the crew are too distracted to notice him as they are laughing their rear ends off at Lucien. He notices a new group approaching, two slick robots and one rabbit looked serious.

With no one looking, Simon quickly and quietly jumps back into the empty cryonic pod, wanting to see where this goes.

"What the hell is going on here?"

The cleaning crew instantaneously sobered up, trembling when realization struck they were caught goofing by Chief Rancid.

"I said 'what in the hell is going on?' sailors!" the chief had a voice of a drill instructor, sending a spine straightening terror down their backs as they stood at attention, including Lucien, his face still dirty but had just a big fear of superiors.

"N-N-Nothing sir!" Lucien nervously stuttered.

"You know the rules! No insubordinate behavior on duty! Is that clear?"

"Yes sir!" they shouted in unison.

"A'ight, return to your standby stations immediately, we will be taking over these pods for post-mission evaluation, for these cryonic pods and occupants contain highly classified information, now leave!"

"Aye sir." Lucien and the other three began marching out of the bay.

Chief Rancid pulled out a security chip from his pocket and inserted it into the fifth pod's side.

It chirped, not recognizing any biological data collected.

"Negative," Rancid said empathetically as he moved to pod four, apparently been doing this same meaningless routine for a long time.

"Negative." Same result for pod four, he moves on to the next one.

"Negative," Rancid was about to move on to the next pod when he saw movement in pod three.

"What the?" he jerks his head back. The figure in the pod motionless through the fogged metallic casing, its occupant looked dirty.

"Eh, no surprise Whiskers got himself dirty . . . again," Rancid shrugs it off as he moves on to pod two.

"Whew," Simon sighs quietly in relief, risking a peek at the person inspecting his pod. He lies back as stiff and lifeless as he could and tried not to make a single sound.

This time he risked another look at the person still on pod two, approaching Jeanette's pod.

"Negative," Rancid pulls out the chip and plugs it in to Scout One's pod.

"Neg-" A confirmative chirping from Jeanette's pod cut Rancid off.

"Huh?" He is speechless. A positive, this has never happened, it shouldn't be possible.

"It's gotta be a malfunction."

He notices the pulsating green light.

" Is it . . ." One of the SwatBots whispers.

"Yes. It's reading positive." Rancid hastily taps his intercommunication earpiece.

"This is Master Chief Rancid in RECON DOCKING to COMMAND, Charlie Gulf, I repeat, Charlie Gulf. We have a vegetation scout who's recovered a live specimen! This is no bull, I repeat! We have a Code Green!" Rancid said with utmost alertness.

At that moment, the entire dock came to a halt as an alarm sounded, all the lights turned green.

Simon's heart raced as he tried to process all this new confusing commotion, hearing everything through the pod. Is something happening to Jeanette or was going to happen to her?

A few seconds later, Rancid's intercommunication device gets a response.

"This is COMMAND to DOCKING. We have confirmed your findings, now we need further authentication. Report the Extraterrestrial Vegetation Reconnaissance & Evaluation scout to the BRIDGE immediately." A monotone voice replies on the other end of the line.

"Aye Aye." Rancid switches off his earpiece, tapping a command onto a holographic computer pad and in just a moment, a maglev tram floats up to them.

Rancid turns to the SwatBots.

"Orders are to report to the BRIDGE, we are to bring Scout One to the captain and first officer, to see if this is legit, so let's get to it!"

"Sir, yes sir." One steward tap a command into Jeanette's pod.

Jeanette's pod suddenly levitates off the ground and lowers into the tram. Simon almost jumps out of his pod when he sees she is going to be taken away again.

Rancid and his guards board the tram and begin to hover off.

"Netta!" Simon runs out of the pod and quietly sprints after the tram to the elevator the foursome entered without hesitation.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Lucien crouched down from his workstation on the second level of the dock, wondering about the one pod, unable to hear the chief's voice even without that damn loud alarm.

_What is Code Green anyway and what's so secret about those pods?_

What concerned Lucien even more was finding that unknown chipmunk unlike anything he's ever encountered before.

_He IS a mess,_ Lucien thought to himself and his compulsion says clean him no matter what but duty has a strong hold as well.

He spots the messy chipmunk dash across the deck and disappearing behind the elevator doors with the chief, the SwatBots and the pod.

After Lucien watches him disappear-

_Wait a sec, didn't he leave tracks?_ His neurosis nagged.

His electron micro-scan activated, he could see that unknown chipmunk's footprints from kilometers away in a spotless environment.

"Agh, Forthright!" he cursed, now he has to clean up his trail but…what about where he is going? His mind calculates some of his speculations.

_What if he was after that pod? If I go after him, I could get in serious trouble for following a secretive device, and not to mention leaving this dock._

"_FOREIGN CONTAMINATION!_"his visor breaks him away from thought. Actually, it gave him a thought.

Well, he would be cleaning dirt as far as it goes if ever caught outside of here and it is his job to obliterate all unsterilized matter on this ship for health safety. In any sense, he's obeying protocol but then he would have to face the wrath of Chief Rancid in that light after told not to differ from duty. He weighed his options and made a decision.

He double-checks if the other three left to their stations. No one is paying attention all is safe.

Lucien jumps down to the deck and begins scrubbing away, from the tracks to wherever that man was following the chief's tram.

"I wonder what's in that pod is so important to him?" Lucien asks himself.


	14. the AXIOM

**SimonSeville27**: Yeah I agree that I find some things like people posting annotations but never take them down somewhat annoying and the fact not everybody follow the rules. Nobody can help it. Not to mention it gets tiring after a while when one posts a story and others will soon follow with a similar plot like that one person who did a story of both _Chipmunks_ and _Chipettes_ getting **_Facebook_** and now there are others that follows.  
And what rumor are you talking about? I don't like rumors hence most of the time it ain't true and not to mention it's a pain like chained web mail.  
The last time I checked, this _IS_ a story!

**DISCLAIMER**

_The Chipmunks _are an American music group of singing anthropomorphic chipmunks owned and operated by **_Ross Bagdasarian Jr. _**and **_Janice Karman_** under **_Bagdasarian Productions_**, formerly **_Bagdasarian Film Corporations_**.

**_Bagdasarian Productions _**owns the rights to the fictional anthropomorphic chipmunk singing group_ The Chipettes_ that first appeared on the 1983 Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon series.

_Rancid Rabbit_ is a fictional character in the American animated television series CatDog created for **_Nickelodeon_** by **_Peter Hannan_**.

_Panchito Pistoles (Panchito Romero Miguel Junipero Francisco Quintero Gonzalez III)_ is a character who appears in Disney's The Three Caballeros as well as several **_Disney_** comics.

_Chance Furlong_, alieas _T-Bone_ and Mister Kat, is a fiction character in the animated series produced by **_Hanna-Barbera_** and **_Turner Program Services_** called SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron, created by **_Christian Tremblay_** and **_Yvon Tremblay_**.

* * *

Chief Rancid waits tensely as the elevator quickly passes deck after deck, his mind running a mile a minute, thinking of the importance of the pod's contents he's transporting and what's going to happen. He looks up at the elevator holographic screen. From DOCKING they left thirteen levels below, the MAIN DECK thirty seven levels up and the BRIDGE another kilometer forward through the deck. As much of a large-scaled technological wonder and achievement the _Axiom_ is, he hated having to travel so far through a maze, especially to just relay something vital to COMMAND and he's gonna have to go through passengers once he gets on deck, something not very well liked by most of the crew. At least he has an independently running transporter tram, one running in its own directions instead of lighted paths for the hover chairs, speeding things up a lot.

Rancid glimpses a look behind him, thinking he heard a sound. There is nothing but the obedient yet oblivious SwatBots standing at attention patiently waiting to transport the pod. He turns his attention back to the elevator door, wishing they were there by now.

Simon hid behind the transport, behind the guards as the chief looked back. The elevator ride smooth and without a peep, almost quiet as travelling aboard the Axiom Reconnaissance Vehicle. Only hearing his breathing, Simon betted these robots had excellent attention spans and will spot the chipmunk any moment. Simon held his breath, trying not to expose himself, praying the elevator ride wouldn't last much longer. He looks away, inwardly sighing in relief.

Still hiding behind the transport, Simon looked at the catatonic Jeanette through the chassis. He pats the side of the pod her head is on.

_It's going to be alright, Netta, I'm here. _He chased after her without any foresight to whatever lies ahead. The way she is now, even at the hands of other being like himself, she seem to be in some form of harm in his eyes, still frozen, and completely unsure what 'Code Green' meant. Could it be she is to be harmed? Taken away? Or any other way that could separate or end in pain for him and Jeanette?

The elevator doors open, drawing Simon's attention to the tram already moving out. It comes to a stop outside the elevator, waiting for something. Simon risks a peek from the corner of Jeanette's pod to see a long passageway filled with things moving by at high speeds. Wait, those things passing by are beings, anthropomorphic cats, dogs, primates, rodents, amphibians and many more! All of them on trams just like Jeanette's, all moving about at whiplashing speeds. They are all crew of technicians, engineers, mechanics, welders, electricians, SwatBots, painters, cleaners, suppliers and so on. There are about eight outlined paths for the crew in the florescent lit long sterile corridor, four each going in opposite directions. It's a maintenance level in rush hour, everyone on their way to their directives throughout the ship.

Simon's neck gets sore from trying to process the fast-moving vehicles and anthropomorphic beings inside them, fascinated by it all. He wonders how in Forthright's name is he gonna get through that with Jeanette as he looked at her, only to notice the transport is gone.

"Aah!"

Adrenaline spikes in his mind as he realizes Rancid's tram left without him! He had to think quickly, her pod moving fast and has only a split-second to figure out what next.

"Oooooh boy." He looks at the speeding traffic, gulping at the thought of trying to go after her through here. The road too narrow on the sidelines, he has to go _into_ the flow of traffic.

His heart pounding, Simon spots an opening between two passing hover trams, moving fast but far enough apart for Simon to jump through. At least he thinks so…

Risking being squashed or rammed over if too early or too late, he times it carefully.

Simon makes his move and jumps in between the passing vehicles.

"Whoa!" a red Mexican rooster in a sombrero and reddish brown pants driving a hover tram stops suddenly.

Crash!

The rooster ends up causing the next tram to crash into him and the next one to crash into that. Simon has created a pile up.

No one injured but Simon almost killed himself and the drivers there. He reassesses his surroundings, the maglev highway too narrow for him to walk between, so if he can just climb onto one of those transports, it would make his trip a lot easier. Simon still has to move! Jeanette is getting farther and farther from him!

_Ah, screw this. _Simon rather jumps onto a vehicle to carry him there, not walk in between and harm anyone else.

A freight tam passes by and...

Simon grabs onto the passing tram, which yanks him off his feet. Feeling his arms been ripped out off, he collects his composure as he stands up on the freighter. The oversized owl driving hasn't noticed him yet. As he looks ahead, there's an intersection coming, the paths splitting into other directions, Jeanette going straight ahead, but his tram isn't. He waits for another vehicle to pass him at the right moment.

Simon jumps again…

Boarding onto another freighter, he hits the ground hard before hitting the ground and skids to a halt. Simon winces and whines at the pain, banging his knees and elbows along with a newly forming bruise on the side of his head. A tan, buffed cat wearing aviator's goggles on his head driving the freighter shouts curses at Simon but he doesn't care. Simon looks around, noting his glasses fell off and he retrieves them before traffic ran over them. Placing her glasses back on his face, Simon sees he is right in the middle of the intersection, not standing on any of the lines, he's safe for now.

The traffic is chaotic as vehicles pass by, missing each other by inches as they change directions. Not remembering where Jeanette went, Simon begins to panic at being lost.

In the distance, a tram with a cryogenic pod made its way up a slope, a sign reading AFT MAINTANENCE CORRIDOR-TO–AFT PASSENGER CORRIDOR overhead.

"Netta!" Relieved and drawn, Simon immediately runs through the passing intersection vehicles after Jeanette, oblivious to hover trams almost running him over and the resulting pile up as they braked to stop.

Simon continued running up the sloped passageway, not caring to realize the passageway he came from not too narrow to run through anymore.

Simon reaches a set of different hover lines. Instead of white lighted paths, they're blue. Simon noticed a strange looking hover vehicle in front of him. The small craft seemed automated, guiding itself along the blue-lighted maglev lines on the floor. He runs up to see what it is.

The vehicle is a hover chair and sitting in it… a creature. It's a big creature, a really, BIG creature! Morbidly obese is actually a better word.

_Wait a minute,_ Simon notices the tan skin, face, and features of a human body. The creature is actually a human!

This was certainly the fattest human Simon ever seen. A male Buy N' Large passenger who looked like a giant human infant, weighing four hundred fifty to five hundred pounds, his skin bloated like a blob, and soft to the touch like gelatin wearing a red jumpsuit bearing a Buy N' Large logo. His arms and legs short and stubby, like not meant for usage.

_Is it physically possible for humans to be like that? _Simon wondered as he looks at this strange new being.

Reclined in the chair, a holographic screen seemed presented right in front of his face with speakers mounted on the headrest, blocking the passenger's peripheral vision. The man conversing with someone on the screen, completely lost in his own world.

"Look man, I've been in my cabin all morning, so why don't we say we hover over to the driving range and hit a few virtual balls into space?" The Caucasian sounded bored out of his mind.

"Nah, we did that yesterday I don't wanna do that," the African-American man on the holographic-screen complained.

"Well then what DO you want to do?"

Lost looking at the man, Simon doesn't notice the exact man he's talking to right next to him.

"I dunno, somethin.'" Simon looks over his shoulder to finally see the second man, another Buy N' Large passenger just as fat and baby-looking like the other man, lost in his own world of the hover chair. Simon looks at them, the two humans have no idea they are within each other's presence.

"Huh," Simon slows down his pace as he reaches the entrance to the **MAIN DECK**. Simon merges in, and pauses in amazement.

The corridor bustled with human activity. There must be hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of other humans everywhere.

They are ALL fat in hover chairs with the same red jumpsuits and holographic-screens in their faces just the ones he saw a second ago. Blue lines crisscrossed one another on the floor, a maze of perplex directions of hover chairs. Simon's mind can't process all of them, moving in all directions, and talking nonstop.

Simon carefully makes his way through passing line after line of hover chairs toward another concourse, until getting into the same direction of the traffic flow. He realizes not one person noticed him yet. Who couldn't? He remembers he is the skinniest and filthiest human on the _Axiom_, he can't be hard to find walking dirt against a sterile environment, not to mention comparing his fur and bones appearance, he really stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone remains oblivious to their surroundings, glued to their holographic screens, trapped in their own virtual realities. Each one of them had over-developed fingers tapping commands into their chair's armrest keypads. Simon sees one woman complaining she's hungry. Out of nowhere, a pink and white rabbit in white top with mauve skirt matching the bows on her elongated ears ran to her, bringing an unbelievable large three-litter cup of a liquid food like substance, like a fast food kind. The server puts the cup in the passenger's open hand and she gulps it down. She didn't move a muscle, if she had any.

Simon looks around again. All the passengers ordered food, playing games or chatting, all without moving. The deafening commotion amazed and disgusted Simon. These people the ultimate example of couch potatoes.

Simon passes through another tunnel entitled AFT PASSAGER CORRIDOR-TO-MAIN DECK. The lit end of the tunnel shined brightly as Simon sees clearly before him, in complete awe, the **MAIN DECK**.

A feminine voice echoes throughout the vast open space.

"_BUY N' LARGE, EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO BE HAPPY. YOUR DAY IS VERY IMPORTANT TO US!_"

It's a city-sized ultra mall, a half metropolis/half consumer-goods shop inside a giant starship.

Living quarter rooms rose hundreds of floors up and elevated hover lines move in all directions like freeways. In the distance are shopping centers shaped like futuristic skyscrapers showing endless holographic Buy N' Large advertisements where the direction of the voice seemed to endlessly barrage people with its consumerism. Beyond that, was the sky? Impossible, he is in space. Simon noticed the image of a fake sun above her, projected on the inner dome of the _Axiom's_ hull hundreds of meters high, high enough to call the sky. On the sun's face was a Buy N' Large logo, the time read 12:16 PM and the temperature 72˚ F. The _Axiom_ feels A LOT bigger from the inside.

"Hey waiter!" Simon snaps back into reality when his senses register someone is addressing him.

A man to his left hovered up to him and tries to hand Simon his empty cup, still unaware that Simon isn't a waiter nor of any surroundings like everyone else.

"Here, take the cup."

Simon backs away a bit but the man asks again.

"I said take the cup," the man sounded like he is becoming slightly annoyed. He tries to reach out further to Simon, finally breaking his eyes from the holographic-screen in front of him.

"Uuh.." Simon tries to utter he isn't a server but the man presses on.

"Come on! Take the cup!-Whoa!" He reaches out too far and falls to the floor.

Now stuck on the floor, the flails his legs and arms like an upside down turtle, his limbs unable to move him. Simon grabs the drink out of the passenger's hand as ordered.

Red lines appeared under Simon's feet and immediately two SwatBots brush pass Simon, almost shoving him over to where the man fell.

The SwatBots redirects the flow of stopped traffic around the man.

The man looks up at the SwatBots helping the other oblivious humans but him. He tries to get the SwatBots attention.

"Uh, SwatBots, hello? A little help? Please?"

One SwatBot turns to the man on the floor, regarding him with an empathetic electronic voice.

"Please remain stationary, sir, service will be here to assist you shortly," he said in a practiced line.

"Uh, anybody? Help?" he tries to ask the crowd, all too busy ordering food, playing games or chatting. Simon feels a ping of guilt for the man, he could've taken the cup and he never would have forced himself to fall over. The two SwatBots, as broad and strapping as they were, aren't doing anything much other than making sure these people get to their destinations on time. He must feel embarrassed for causing the delays of the passengers, and no one else is even offering to listen to the poor helpless man on the floor, inconsiderately passing him by. To correct his actions, Simon takes the matter into his own hands.

Simon stuffs the jumbo size cup into his utility bag out of curiosity before he picks up the man by the back.

"Whoa! Wha-What's going on?" The man looks shocked.

Simon grunts as he strains against the man's weight, lifting heavy cubes before and developing a practiced lift, but not of this man's mass, likely four hundred pounds. Simon manages to lift him high enough to drop him back onto his hover chair, the man groans as he lands on his belly.

"Are you alright?" Simon asks the fat man.

The fat man looks surprised as he sees Simon before him.

"Uuuuh…yeah…thanks," was the reply. He had short blond hair, freckles, brown eyes and he clearly doesn't know how to respond to the dirty, thin chipmunk before him, like he's the strangest being he's ever seen.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Simon," he introduces himself, trying to shake his hand with him. It's pretty awkward with his mechanical hand against a bulbous palm of a hand.

"Uh, I'm Jon."

He seemed confused as if unable to get his bearings, must've been in a virtual stasis for a long time, isolated from the outside world like Jeanette.

**Jeanette!** It hit him like a ton of bricks. The awesome structure of the ship made Simon almost completely forget his search for her!

"Netta?" Simon blurts out, frantically scanning all directions for her.

"Uh, no, it's Jon," the man corrected.

Simon spots an open maglev monorail in the center of the deck lobby. Not that it is the only noticeable structure other than the thousands of identically dressed people, but the familiar pod attached to a tram boarding the monorail with Rancid and his SwatBot escorts.

"Netta!"

Simon sprints after the monorail, already forgetting Jon, leaving him even more confused.

"Uh…bye, Simon," Jon shyly waves farewell.

_That was interesting,_ Jon wonders if he will see that strange chipmunk again.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

The monorail about to depart, Simon guns it with whatever strength he has into his legs to make it!...

Simon successfully leaps on just as the last car pulls out, but ends up hitting his shin.

Simon now has more pain to wince at but he caught up with Jeanette. The monorail picks up speed as it cruises down the central parts of the city-ship.

As the tram made its way down, Simon takes another minute to be confound in wonderment at the scenery, a total blast in comparison to what he grew up with his whole life. He sees a day care center full of fat infants being taught Buy N' Large predesigned education and fed treats by an obese grandmotherly duck in a floral lavender dress and a pink apron matching her collaret. Two pins held her graying hair in a bun, bangs curled.

"'A' is for 'Axiom,' your home sweet home. 'B' is for 'Buy N' Large,' your very best friend," the fowl lectured.

They pass a Buy N' Large food court, all the people seemed to be preoccupied mostly by eating or drinking nonstop out of 'lunch-in-a-cup' as the ship's computer voice called it. He also notices everyone had those large sized lunch-in-a-cup at hand, most preoccupied with eating, guess that explains the obesity.

The tram passes a 'Feel Beautiful' beauty salon. Simon sees many female passengers entering to get their hair done, new makeup, their skin tuned and so on by anthropomorphic beauticians.

"It's the new you! You look stunning!" a tall white fur mink with long golden yellow hair matching her downy tail monotonously replied to an oblivious portly brown haired woman, as if doing this for years. The brunette and other customers probably weren't paying attention to them, reminding Simon of the female characters in Hello Dollywho worked and focused a lot on their physical appearance in order to look attractive or stylish. Only difference here is they are just as glued to their holographic-screens as much as everyone else is. How paradox, they worry about prettier looks when they don't actually look at each other. Simon never understood any of it.

He doesn't understand anything here, not imagining this way of life.

Everything so bright and clean, the sterilized air far from the toxic but accustomed stench of garbage and rot he grew up, tingling his tainted lungs to breathe in and out of this pollutant free environment. The whole ship full of humans and anthropomorphic beings felt alive, the sounds of music and cheerful voices he's never heard before, nothing like the cries and screams of workers dying or begging for mercy. No, here it boomed with peaceful life but alluring with pointless luxuries. So much so, the happy noises proved deafening, his ears sensitive after spending decades in perpetual silence.

Nothing like Earth, this is actual civilization.

Simon's attention draws to the many jumpsuit fashion holographic-advertisements. The ship's voice comes on.

"_ATTENTION __AXIOM SHOPPERS, TRY BLUE, IT'S THE NEW RED._"

"Oooo…" the passengers next him actually noticed something out of their holographic screens. They pushed a command on their chair's keypad and all of their red colored jumpsuits turneddd blue. They go back to chatting, as if nothing happened.

"Whoa," Simon states in fascination, seeing how much technology changed these people, having to lift a finger to get what they want.

Turning his sight to the front end of the monorail, she saw Jeanette's tram. He makes his way over to her but another obese human blocked his way, a red haired woman busy chatting on her holographic screen. Simon tries to squeeze through to the other side, if he could just…

The woman's chair backs up, pinning him to the wall.

"Ah!" Simon flails his arms as he tries to slip out.

His head sore and not enough room to go around the woman. He'll have to get her to move. The woman is too busy to care to notice who's around her.

"Date?" she scoffs.

"Don't get me started on the date. Every holographic-date I have been on has been a _virtual_ disaster!"

"Excuse me ma'am?" Simon tries to get her attention, she's still oblivious.

"…If I could just meet one, one who wasn't so…superficial."

"Ma'am?" Simon taps on her headset, she still doesn't acknowledge him.

"I mean, there are no good men out there!"

"Ma'am?" Simon says loudly, tapped harder. He tries to pull off her headset.

"I know! I know because I scrolled through them all-" her headset shortens out as Simon accidentally breaks it off.

"What the—?" she gasps, her holographic screen flickers off and her jumpsuit color defaults to red. Simon backs away, as if he did something terribly wrong enough to feel her wrath.

She doesn't yell at Simon because she _still_ doesn't notice him yet. She takes in the light, trying to focus on the far away structures of the MAIN DECK with her contracted eyes. When her vision clears, she is instantly hypnotized by looking at the passing cityscape of the _Axiom_, if seeing the outside world for the first time.

"Uuuh…Excuse me? Ma'am?" Simon whistles to get her attention.

"Huh?" Her eyes meet Simon's, just as confused as Jon, unsure of what to say at this weird chipmunk.

"Uuh…Can I move to the other side? Please?" Simon asks politely, pointing toward Jeanette.

The woman looks at him for a second, still fazed by how dirty he looked until she follows his finger to the other side of her chair, to the vacant spot next to a cylinder mounted on the tram. She slowly realized he was asking her to move forward a little.

"Oh! Oh, um, sure, go ahead!" The woman commands her seat to hover forward as Simon gets through.

"Ah, thank you, miss…?"

"Mary," the woman introduces herself.

"Simon," he gestures to himself as he waves goodbye to Mary, making the last few steps to Jeanette's pod.

Simon sighs in relief now he is back with Jeanette after losing her and roaming the massive ship.

He climbs onto the back of the tram. Rancid shouldn't be able to see him as long as Simon doesn't have to run after them again. He clings onto the pod protectively, not wanting to go through so many distractions and misadventures again.


End file.
